Lopez-Alves to be Senior Fellow at U.S. Institute of Peace

Professor Fernando Lopez-Alves has been named one of a select number of recipients of a Senior Fellowship in the Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace at the United States Institute for Peace for the academic year 2006-2007. (For this year's selection, there were 210 applicants, 10 finalists, and only 7 fellowships awarded.)

The United States Institute of Peace, located in Washington, DC, is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and democratic transformations, and increase peace-building capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct involvement in peace-building efforts around the globe.

During his fellowship year, Prof. Lopez-Alves will be working on a book project that has been the focus of his field research over the past three years: "Citizens Against States: The Breakdown of Trust in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile." (The field research for this project was funded by a grant from the the Inter-American Foundation, with matching funds from the Ford Foundation.) Professor Lopez-Alves states: "I hope that this book will make a contribution to theories on trust, political obligation, and state reform." As an adjunct project based on this research, he also hopes to write a shorter book manuscript for the general public, to be published in both English in Spanish.