ILAS Staff
Director: Jose C. Moya
Jose C. Moya, taught Latin American history at UCLA for seventeen years and directed an equal number of doctoral dissertations before coming two years ago to Barnard College, where he directs the Forum on Migration. He has also taught at the Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires and the Université de Paris VII. His book Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Berkeley, 1998) received five awards and the journal Historical Methods (Winter, 2001) devoted a forum to its theoretical and methodological contributions to migration studies. He has written extensively on global migration, gender, and labor; and has been a Fulbright Fellow in Buenos Aires (three times), a Burkhardt Fellow in Rome, a Del Amo Fellow in Madrid, and held a fellowship from the NEH. Moya is currently editing Latin American Historiography (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and working on a socio-cultural history of anarchism in belle époque Buenos Aires and the Atlantic world.
Executive Director: Thomas J. Trebat
Prof. Tom Trebat is the Associate Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and of the Institute’s Center for Brazilian Studies. He joins Columbia after a lengthy career on Wall Street dedicated to economic research on Latin America. Prior to joining ILAS in February 2005, Tom was Managing Director and Head of the Latin America team in the Economic and Market Analysis department of Citigroup. He joined Citicorp Securities in 1996 as the head of Emerging Market Research. Previously, he worked at Bankers Trust, the Ford Foundation, and Chemical Bank. As a senior international economist at Bankers Trust, he was involved in many aspects of country debt negotiations in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America during the 1980s. At the Ford Foundation, he served for four years as the Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean Programs. At Chemical Bank, Tom organized and directed the emerging markets research group. Mr. Trebat has a Ph.D in economics from Vanderbilt University and remains active in teaching and publishing. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. His book, “Brazil's State-owned Enterprises: A Case Study of the State as Entrepreneur,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 1983.
Administrator: Eliza Kwon-Ahn
Eliza graduated in 1997 with BA in East Asian Languages & Area Studies, Spanish, and Portuguese from Rutgers University. As a Henry Rutgers Scholar, she conducted a graduate level research on "Koreans in Brazil: A Cultural Study of Life Between Two Cultures." She also received her MA in Latin American & Caribbean Studies and an Advanced Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in 2001. Prior to joining ILAS in June 2003, she worked for different organizations, including as a Latin American Sales & Marketing Manager for a multinational company and as Project Research Assistant for "Brazil: Body and Soul" Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Her interest in Latin America is mainly in Brazil, Arts & Cultures, Immigration & Cultural Assimilation, National Identity, and Social and Education Development.
Language Coordinator: Ruth E. Borgman
Prof. Borgman received her M.A. from the University of Puerto Rico and her PhD in Latin American Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her area of expertise is in developing pedagogically innovative content-based Spanish courses. She currently teaches two such courses, one in Mexican studies (Advanced Spanish Immersion Course on Contemporary Mexico) and the other an Intermediate Spanish Course based on Latin American history. She also teaches this new approach to pedagogy, in which students learn a language through the communication of specific subjects, to teachers in the New York metropolitan area through various National Endowment for the Humanities-funded summer institutes. Prof. Borgman received a U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture grant to organize colloquia on the topic of "Mexican Intellectuals of the 20th Century," the first three of which have taken place in Mexico City, San Antonio and New York City.
Research Librarian: Pamela Graham, Ph.D.
Dr. Graham is the Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian at Columbia University. She is responsible for selecting library materials in all subject areas about or from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, and is also available to provide reference assistance and instruction to students and faculty. She received an MA and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; her dissertation was a study of immigration between the Dominican Republic and New York City. Dr. Graham's ongoing research interests include Caribbean politics and migration, especially questions of immigrant participation in homeland politics, and the political incorporation of immigrants into new countries of residence. Her other areas of expertise include the development and uses of the Internet in Latin America.
Brazil Studies Center Program Coordinator: Teresa Aguayo
Teresa is the Program Coordinator for the Center for Brazilian Studies at Columbia University. She previously worked as a research associate in the Economics Program at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a consultant for UNILEVER in New York City. Teresa holds an M.A. in Economics from the New School of Social Research.
Program Coordinator: Eileen O'Connor
Eileen received her B.A. in Romance Languages and Literature from Harvard University, and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from NYU. She has previously worked as an Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU and as a Researcher and Spanish interpreter for a Boston University School of Public Heath study of HIV and Hepatitis-C. Her primary interests in Latin America include literature, literary translation, dance, Afro-Hispanic religions, and the intersections of popular religiosity, migration and activism.