Hector Silva joins the Center as the Central American Visiting Fellow. Dr. Silva is a member of the Congress of El Salvador. He has served two terms as the Mayor of the Capital City of San Salvador during which he worked on the decentralization of government and the rehabilitation of downtown San Salvador . Dr. Silva will work on a project entitled Establishing Guidelines to Increase the Coverage of Health Insurance in the Population Receiving Remittances in Latin America: the Case of El Salvador. Dr. Silva holds degrees in obstetrics from the University of Michigan , Public Health from Johns Hopkins University , and social policy management from the Institute for Social Development in Washington , DC . He will be in residence for the full academic year.

Brodwyn Fischer joins the Center as the Jorge Paulo Lemann Visiting Scholar. Dr. Fischer's research includes the history of inequality, poverty and race relations in Brazil 's urban society. Her time at Harvard will be spent working on a book entitled The Poverty of Rights: Law, Citizenship, and Inequality in Rio de Janeiro, 1930-1964. Dr. Fischer is currently an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Northwestern University . She holds a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University . She will be in residence for the full academic year.

Mariano Narodowski is the de Fortabat Visiting Scholar. Dr. Narodowski is currently the Director of Education in the School of Government at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina . He is a scholar of education policy trends and schooling systems in Latin America . At Harvard he will pursue a project entitled State Monopoly and Exit in the Argentine Education System: Self-Organization and Public Policy. Dr. Narodowksi holds a Ph.D in education from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil . He will be in residence during the fall 2006 semester.

Ramiro Guerrero is a Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar. Mr. Guerrero is currently Vice Minister for Social Protection in Colombia where he is in charge of health sector financing, and facilitates health care delivery and regulation. His research interests include health system policy and implementation in Latin America and Colombia . At Harvard, Mr. Guerrero will work with the Harvard Initiative for Global Health on a research project which assesses Colombia ' s health reform and investigates how coverage may be expanded and improved through policy changes. Mr. Guerrero holds masters degrees in economic policy management from the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Developpement International (CERDI) at the Universite d'Auvergne in France and in environmental and natural resource economics from the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia . He will be in residence for the full academic year.

Nils Jacobsen joins the Center as a Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar. His expertise includes the history of the Andean region and comparative rural history as well as Peruvian social and economic history. At Harvard Dr. Jacobsen will be completing a book entitled Peru in Revolution: The Civil War of 1894-95 and the Foundation of the Nation's Modern Political Culture. Dr. Jacobsen is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a doctorate from the University of California , Berkeley . He will be in residence during the spring 2007 term.

Hector Jorquera joins the Center as the Luksic Visiting Scholar. Dr. Jorquera is an engineer who partially specializes in the study of air quality. He has been a Visiting Professor at Imperial College in London , Universite de la Bourgogne in France , and the University of Iowa . While at Harvard, he will work on a project entitled Urban Air Quality in Latin America : Are We Moving Towards Sustainable Development? Dr. Jorquera is currently a researcher at the Universidad Catolica de Chile. He received his PhD in engineering from the University of Minnesota . Dr. Jorquera will be in residence for the full academic year.

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.

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.