First year PhD student Eli Portella has been awarded a Tinker Field Research Grant by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies. The grant will fund international field research in Havana, Cuba in the summer of 2017.

Her research project consists of historiographical, archival, as well as translation work. The project aims to survey exemplary instances of Cuban internationalism and situate these historical examples in relation to the parallel history of the development of neoliberal globalization. Beyond the more well-known phenomena of Cuban “medical internationalism,” the project will examine Cuban involvement in the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, as well as collaborative internationalist projects in Ethiopia, Syria, Vietnam, Congo, Bolivia, Angola, and Nicaragua. This research will work toward a more comprehensive and geographically informed critique of neoliberalism, offering critical contributions to the existing Euro-Atlantic theoretical literature on neoliberalism.