Current visiting faculty
María Eugenia Bové Gimenez
- Home institution: Universidad de la República (Uruguay)
- Research focus: Maria's research interests include adult education, prison education, and criminology.
- Contact: eugeniabove [at] gmail.com (Email) | Academia profile
María Eugenia Bové Gimenez is an assistant professor at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay (Udelar). She works in the "Programa de Respaldo al Aprendizaje" (Progresa, Learning Support Program) within the "Comisión Sectorial de Enseñanza" (Sectorial Teaching Commission) and at the Institute of Law Sociology (Law School, Universidad de la República). Between 2021 and 2023, she worked as an educator in the National Prison Education Program – Department of Education and Culture, adding to her long-term trajectory of work in prisons.
Her academic work has been dedicated to the study of Uruguayan prisons, from a public policy perspective, as well as to the micro processes that give meaning to the daily life of punishment institutions, especially educational experiences. In recent years, this perspective has been enriched by the perspective of democratization of higher education, mainly through the development of tools that allow a personalized and student-centered higher education, as worked on by Progresa. The support she provides to students with non-hegemonic trajectories within the Universidad de la República focuses on the power of diversity as a way of transforming higher education institutions.
She has recently oriented her work to writing in the university, especially considering the ways in which creativity and the search for diverse voices strengthen educational trajectories, for example, of students who are in prisons. She is currently part of various academic working groups, one on coexistence and violence, and another on writing and educational innovations. Her tasks include the organization of academic events, teaching, research, and student mentoring.
Bové Gimenez received a BS in Psychology from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay, 2011), a MA in Political and Social Studies (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2015), a PhD in Political and Social Sciences, specialized in Sociology (UNAM, 2019) and a Diploma in Arts and Cultural Management in Territory in the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina, 2024).
Agustín Cano Menoni
- Home institution: Universidad de la República (Uruguay)
- Research focus: Within the field of education, Agustín's work emphasizes higher education, community engagement and university-society relations.
- Contact: agustincanom [at] gmail.com (Email) | Academia profile | ResearchGate profile
Agustín Cano Menoni is a full-time professor at Universidad de la República (Udelar), the main public university of Uruguay. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University.
In Uruguay, He works in the Institute of Education (School of Humanities and Education) and in the “Programa Integral Metropolitano”, an Udelar engagement program in Montevideo. Between 2008 and 2011 he served as coordinator of the Department of University Extension Projects of the Central Extension Service of Udelar. He is a Level I researcher in the National System of Researchers of the uruguayan “Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación”. He is currently a member of the editorial board of several academic journals in Uruguay and Argentina dedicated to university engagement topics. His academic work is located in the field of education, with emphasis on higher education, and in particular on the subject of community engagement and university-society relations. His work has sought to articulate both a sociological and a pedagogical perspective.
He has coordinated or participated in comparative research projects on community engagement and outreach policies of universities in the region, in research on the pedagogical dimension of university engagement, in systematizations of experiences, and in historical studies on Latin American extension. On these topics he has researched, published, cooperated and taught in undergraduate and graduate courses in Uruguay as well as in universities of Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Panama, Mexico and USA. He has also organized academic events both nationally and internationally, and has written books, chapters and scientific articles in academic journals. In addition to the purposes linked to the creation of knowledge, his work has also sought to contribute to the construction of pedagogical alternatives in higher education, particularly from his work at the “Programa Integral Metropolitano” of UdelaR. From this program, he has promoted interdisciplinary and intersectorial research, teaching and community engagement processes, aimed at strengthening educational communities and their capacity to respond to the problems and challenges they face. Dr. Cano received BS in Psychology from the Udelar - Uruguay (2007), MA in Social Projects from Lumsa Università di Roma – Italy (2007) and PhD in Pedagogy from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – UNAM (2017).
Past Visiting Faculty
The Polson Institute for Global Development hosted urban geographer Nik Heynen as its inaugural Distinguished Speaker in the Fall 2023 semester. A Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, Heynen’s research explores areas of urban political ecology, abolition ecologies and geographies, and geographies of neoliberalism and racial capitalism. While on campus, Heynen delivered a three-day seminar on Abolition Ecology, held office hours for interested graduate students, and presented at the Critical Development seminar series. At the core of the visit was a three-day mini-course on critical contemporary issues surrounding food, energy and climate through the lens of Abolition Geography, which brought together over 20 graduate students from Global Development, Human Ecology, City and Regional Planning, Anthropology, and Engineering.
Inclusive Rural Development in Times of Urbanization
Professor Bettina Bock, Wageningen University
Since 2009 the urban population has outnumbered the population living in rural areas. The situation differs considerably between high and low-income countries, with about 80% of the population residing in urban areas in the former compared to 30% in the latter. Yet the tendency is crystal clear – the world is urbanizing rapidly. Urbanization is generally perceived as a sign of modernization and, in turn, development and economic growth. At the same time there is concern about its effect on rural areas and their residents and anxiety that urbanization concurs with a continuous rural decline, impoverishment and social exclusion of rural residents, and rural abandonment. More insight into the interrelation between urbanization and rural development and the preconditions for realizing inclusive rural development is, hence, of crucial importance.
This course looked into the impact of urbanization on rural areas and the processes of social and spatial differentiation that go along with it. It focused on the presence and the construction of peripheral places in times of mobilization and globalization that change the significance of the geographical location. The course was built up around four core questions: (1) How do current trends of urbanization affect rural areas? (2) What does marginalization mean for rural residents and how does marginalization interact with social exclusion? (3) How can we explain the marginalization of rural areas in times of globalization and mobilization? (4) What can be done to counteract marginalization and promote inclusive rural development?
The course provided knowledge and comprehension of the features of rural differentiation in various parts of the world and their impact on the daily life of their residents. Students learned how to examine rural change and how to use novel theoretical approaches for analyzing processes of marginalization. This allowed them to identify the main drivers and agents of marginalization and their effects on residents’ sense of belonging and affective engagement. Integrating the different drivers and effects of marginalization enabled them to examine varying approaches to rural development, to evaluate rural development policies and to design alternatives.
Nature, Modernity, and Social Theory: the challenge of the Anthropocene
Professor Michael Löwy, emeritus research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
The planet is said to be entering a new geological era, the Anthropocene, where the pattern of human social reproduction is seriously threatening the natural environment and provoking dramatic climate change. Classical social theorists from Karl Marx to Max Weber were not unaware of the changing nexus between society and nature, but it did not occupy a central place in their theories. This course will explore the ecological turn in social theory via critical readings of both classical and contemporary social theory.
Video spotlight
Representational Controversies in International Development in Africa
Professor James Fairhead and Professor Nigel Eltringham, University of Sussex
The relationship between power and the production of knowledge concerning development problems has been a preoccupation in international development at least since the postcolonial literatures of the 1980 and 1990s (Escobar, Ferguson, Sachs) inspired by the wider critiques by Foucault, Said and in Africa, Mudimbe’s ‘The Invention of Africa’. These works problematized the production and prioritization of development problems and agendas in Africa. The question arises: what has changed? In this course we examine cases relating to international development in Africa through which the nature of development problems is contested in the domains of environment, health, and conflict to probe current Power/Knowledge configurations, reflecting also on how globalized popular media (film and literature) have become part of this.