2008-2009

Guita Schyfter studied psychology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and television production at the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) as a British Council scholarship winner. Her career as a documentary filmmaker has been widely recognized. She received Mexico’s Ariel award for best medium-length documentary for Xochimilco, historia de un paisaje. Her 1993 feature-length fiction film Novia que te vea, earned five Ariel awards from the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. Her work in this genre also includes her film Sucesos distantes (1994) and Las caras de la luna (The Faces of the Moon) (2001). Her most recent work, Los Laberintos de la Memoria (The Labyrinths of Memory) marks a return to documentary film-making. As the Fundación México/Antonio Madero Visiting Fellow during the Spring 2009 semester, Schyfter will develop a film project based on the life of nineteenth century Mexican intellectual and politician, Melchor Ocampo.

Paul Scolieri, has taught in the Barnard College Department of Dance since 2000 and serves on the faculty advisory committee for the Program in Africana Studies. His primary areas of research and teaching include Latin American and Caribbean dance; political performance in the US; and movement theory and analysis. His writings have appeared in the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. He has served on the Editorial Board of Women and Performance, the Board of Directors of the Congress on Research in Dance as well as on the Board of World Dance Alliance: Americas. Professor Scolieri earned a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and his certification in movement analysis (C.M.A.) from the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in NYC. He joins DRCLAS as the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar for the 2008 – 09 academic year to work on a project entitled: Encountering Dance: Aztec Ritual and Missionary Discourse, a study of the role of dance in the 16th-century “encounter” between Spanish missionaries, conquistadors and “Aztecs” in the New World.

2007-2008
Jesús Velasco is a former Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He joins DRCLAS as a Madero/Fundación México Visiting Scholar for the 2007 – 2008 academic year. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science, from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently an Associate Professor, at the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics, (CIDE) in Mexico City. Professor Velasco has been a Public Policy Scholar, at the Woodrow Wilson Center; and his research areas include: American Political Development and US-Mexican Relations. Dr. Velasco is co-editor of Bridging the Border: Transforming Mexico-US Relations; and the editor of Behind the Crown: The Influence of Neo-conservatism on American Foreign Policy. During his fellowship he will be working on his next book, Seducing America: The Relationship Between the Mexican Government and American Transnational Intellectuals, 1920s – 2006.

Aurora Gomez-Galvariatto Freer is the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar. She is scholar of Mexican and Latin American economic history, with a focus on business, labor, and industrial histories as well as economic development. At Harvard, Dr. Gomez-Galvariatto Freer will be revising her award-winning 2000 doctoral dissertation entitled The Impact of Revolution: Business and Labor in the Mexican Textile Industry, Orizaba Veracruz 1900-1930 for publication as a book. She is a professor in the Department of Economics at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas in Mexico. Dr. Gomez-Galvariatto Freer received her PhD in history from Harvard University . She will be in residence during the fall semester.

2006-2007
Alejandro Poire is the Antonio Madero/Fundacion Mexico Visiting Scholar. A leading scholar on the Mexican electoral process, he has published several academic pieces analyzing public opinion, political culture, campaign dynamics and voting behavior in Mexico . Dr. Poire has been a professor and department chair at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) in Mexico City as well as a senior official in Mexico 's Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE). Last year he held the Robert F. Kennedy professorship (endowed through DRCLAS) and taught a class at the Kennedy School of Government. As a Madero Scholar, Dr. Poire will be working on a project entitled Curbing the undue influence of "power money" in electoral democracy: Which Institutions Work? He received his PhD in political science from Harvard University . He will be in residence for the full academic year.

2005-2006
Robert Bye was the Antonio Madero/Fundacion Mexico Visiting Scholar. A scholar in ethnobotany, taxonomy, and the history of botany, he will develop a project entitled, Bridging a Mexican Scientific Gap to Strengthen its Biodiversity Programs: Ethnobotanical Continuity between Colonial Explorations and National Scientific Institutions. Currently, Bye serves as Senior Researcher at the Botanical Garden of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma, Mexico. He holds a doctorate in Biology from Harvard University. He will be in residence in the spring term.

Rafael Dobado held a concurrent appointment as a DRCLAS Visiting Scholar, and Fellow of the Real Colegio Complutense. He is an expert in colonial history and, during his residency at Harvard, will develop the project Colonial Origins of Contemporary Problems in Latin America' An Enquire into the Mexican Case. Dobado holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Universidad Complutense, and is a faculty member at this institution. He will be in residence in the spring term.

Richard Salvucci was the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar. A respected historian of Latin America with a number of publications focusing on Mexico, Salvucci conducted research for a project entitled, La Deuda Eterna: A New Financial History of Mexico's London Debt, 1823-1887. Salvucci currently teaches at Trinity University in Texas. He holds a Ph.D. degree in History from Princeton University. He will be in residence in the spring term.

2004-2005
Ernesto Torres-Lopez is the Antonio Madero/ Fundacion Mexico en Harvard Visiting Scholar for the 2004-2005 academic year. Torres-Lopez was trained as an immunologist and microbiologist at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon in Monterrey N.L., Mexico. During his fellowship at Harvard, he will be based at the Harvard Medical School and collaborate with David M. Knipe, Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics on a Herpes Simplex Virus Vaccine. While at Harvard, in addition to his research project entitled Implementation of Advanced Viral Diagnosis Techniques in Mexico, Torres-Lopez will gain additional training at HMS for the opening of a virology laboratory at the Hospital Universitario of the Medical School at the Universidad Autonoma of Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico.