Visiting Faculty Spotlight: María Inclán

Craig M. Cogut Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies, Fall 2020-Spring 2021

María Inclán is Profesora-Investigadora at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City. She has specialized on the study of comparative social movements and democratization processes. In particular, her research has focused on the development of social movements and cycles of protest within democratic transitions and individual triggers of protest participation. She is currently developing a research project on online political and mobilizing campaigns. Before coming to CLACS, she spent a year as a Visiting Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of History at Princeton University’s Program in Latin American Studies (2017-2018). Her first book The Zapatista Movement and Mexico’s Democratic Transition was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. Other works have been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Latin American Politics and Society and Mobilization.

Hometown: Mexico City

Educational background (Where you studied, what you studied): I did my undergraduate studies majoring in psychology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Then, I got my MPA at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, and my PhD in political science at Penn State.

What research will you be conducting at Brown? What excites you about this work? I am currently developing a research project on online political campaigns together with Amalia Pulido, also at CIDE. We are interested on tracing the effects of campaigns ads on individuals' online and real-time political behavior before and after elections. While at Brown, I expect we will be able to finish our research proposal and be ready to begin collecting the necessary data.

What course will you be teaching in the fall? Do you have any expectations/stories you’ve heard about teaching here? I have proposed to teach a course on research design on Latin American social movements. I envision it to be a very interactive and creative course, as instead of devoting a seminar to discuss research design and Latin American social movements literatures, I would like to devote the course time to hands-on teamwork, where students learn about social movements in Latin American by researching them. I would like students to assume endless resources in terms of time, data, and budget to plan their research projects.

What are you hoping to gain from your experience here? First, I look forward to teaching at Brown, as I hope the experience will allow me to learn new teaching skills. I also look forward to all the events at CLACS and the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs and to interacting and collaborating with CLACS students, faculty, and other affiliated members. Finally, having access to the unparalleled research resources that Brown has to offer, will certainly enable me to further my own research agenda.