Each year, a selection committee of LAS faculty bestows the Charles Wood Thesis Award to a UF MALAS student who has produced an outstanding master’s thesis in the field of Latin American Studies. The committee makes the determination based on the quality of research and analysis, clarity of prose, and scholarly contribution to Latin American Studies.
This award honors the contributions of Charles Wood, former director of the UF Center for Latin American Studies (1996-2004) and eminent sociologist who made significant scholarly contributions to a broad range of topics. Dr. Wood was a committed teacher and mentor who took special pride in introducing MA students to the pleasures and demands of research.
Winners of the Charles Wood Thesis Award
2025
Jessica Alvarez Starr, Antislavery and Anticolonial Alliances in Puerto Rican Abolitionist and Nationalist Movements, 1800-1898
Tania Trejo-Mendez, Mujeres Pa’lante: Writings of the Women of the Young Lords and the Formation of a Third World Feminist Counterpublic
2024
Luísa Bridi Dacroce, Asterisked Identities: Navigating Race as Children of Brazilian Immigrants in the United States
2023
Nashia Graneau, Looking at Gendered Conditions, Experiences and Embodiments through the Oral Narratives of Kalinago Women
2022
Marcos Silverio Ramos Valdés, The Role of Home Gardens in Creating Community Ties in La Habana, Cuba
2020
Stephanie Cadaval, Ten Years of Growing Together: Partnerships, Gender, and Decision-Making in Community Mangrove Restoration
2019
James Everett, Ausencia sentimental: Colombo-Venezuelan affect, diaspora, and music in Campo de la Cruz, Colombia
2018
Lisa Krause, The Metamorphosis of Las Mariposas: A Memory of the Mirabal Sisters in the Dominican Republic and its Diaspora in the United States
2017
Akemi Inamoto, Embodied Experiences of Climate Change: Gendered Perceptions and Differentiated Adaptations among Rice Farmers in Tolima, Colombia.
2015
Anna Porter, Mobilizing for Voice: The Bartolinas in Bolivia
2014
Adam Reid, Borders and Bridges: Negotiating Ethnic and National Identities in the Argentine Anarchist Movement, 1890-1930