The Department of Languages, Cultures and Film holds the annual Steven Rubenstein lecture in memory of former colleague, Steven Rubenstein, Reader in Latin American Studies and a specialist in the Shuar nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 2021 it was delivered by two members of the Network, Dr Marieke Riethof and PhD student Richard Smith, on “Memories of Resistance: Archiving Chile’s Graphic Resistance”.
Recent activities organised by members of the Network include the international conference “Memory and Representation in Latin America” on 8-10th April 2021. This virtual event, part of the AHRC-funded project Memory, Victims, and Representation of the Colombian Conflict, was timed to commemorate Colombia’s “National Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims” on 9th April. Speakers covered a wide range of Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico.
In 2019, funded by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), members of the Network held the international conference “Gender, ‘Race’ and Performance: Revisiting the Black Atlantic”, where Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa (University of Cambridge) delivered a keynote address about issues of institutional and structural racism as well as the challenges for anti-racist action in Latin America.
Network members organised and hosted at Liverpool the annual conference of the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) in 2016, and in 2018 the annual conference of PILAS (Postgraduates in Latin American Studies) on the theme of “Contested Narratives: Engagement with Latin America within and Beyond Academia”.
Network members are engaged in public and student-focused activities encouraging connections to Latin American scholarship and culture that have led to collaborations with the LGBT+ staff network and reflections on the duration impacts of colonialism. These include activities co-organised with colleagues in Iberian and Latin American Studies: an annual Iberian & Latin American Week and the Liverpool Latin American Film Festival supported by PRAGDA held in 2017 and 2021. In 2021 the network was supported by the E. Allison Peers fund and the Society of Latin American Studies to host conversations with two Mexican writers and activists: Dahlia de la Cerda and Yasnayá Elena Aguilar.