Ulla Berg

Statement

I am honored to be nominated to serve on the Executive Council (EC) of the Latin American Studies Association. If elected, I will do my best to work diligently to help execute the various priorities in the Association's mission, including fostering intellectual discussion, research and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and their diasporas; promoting the interest of LASA's diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through public debates. I also hope to work to help broaden the Association's reach to new potential communities of members in the region and globally.

As a sociocultural and visual anthropologist specializing in Andean and Latin American migrations, my research has focused on historical and contemporary processes and experiences of migration and mobility within Latin America and between this region and the United States. My work is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and critical, comparative, hemispheric, and post-colonial perspectives which shape my scholarship, my teaching interests, my documentary film practice, and my engagement in Latin American Studies and with the academic profession more broadly. I have twenty years of experience with Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies and I am committed to advancing transdisciplinary and multilingual scholarship, conversations, exchanges, and collaborations that challenge normative frameworks and disciplinary provincialisms. Throughout my career and especially during the past 15 years teaching mostly US Latinx, Black, and Latin American students at a North American public institution, I have continuously strived to retain an organic connection with the rich intellectual traditions of Andean and Latin American anthropology and social science and worked actively to engage Latin American scholarship and institutions in my research and teaching practice. Several of the graduate students I have mentored have since returned to Latin America to occupy or resume teaching and research positions allowing for additional ongoing exchange and collaboration.

As the Director of the Rutgers Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) from 2015-2021, I was responsible for strategic and instructional planning; curricular development; growing our Major and Minor in Latin American Studies; development of external collaborations and partnerships in Latin America and locally, and supporting Latin American-themed programming at the University's New Brunswick campus. During my tenure, I worked intently to increase the visibility of the Center and of Latin American Studies making it more vibrant, relevant, and central to student life at the University. Among key initiatives as a director, I founded the Jueves de Cine film series, a very popular monthly showcase of recent works in Latin American Cinema. As the founder and programmer/curator for Jueves de Cine and co-Director for three years of the Society for Visual Anthropology's Film and Media Festival, I have developed an extensive network among film directors and producers—including numerous indigenous filmmakers across the Americas—and I would be interested in bringing my experience from these programming efforts to further increase the visibility of the LASA Film Festival at the Congress and to LACC.

As the Program Co-Chair for the 2021 LASA Congress, I was centrally involved in the decision about the online format of Congress that year. I believe that subsequent hybrid models have expanded opportunities for participation for scholars at institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean with limited access to visa and travel funds. As a member of the EC, I will work to continue to expand participation, impact, and engagement by exploring more facets of the hybrid format for scholarly, artistic, and activist exchanges.