Luis van Isschot

Luis van Isschot is an Associate Professor of Latin American History, appointed to the Department of History. We are grateful that he is currently serving as the Associate Chair of Latin American Studies in our unit.

He is a historian of modern Latin America, specializing in the study of social movements, political violence, and human rights.  His first book "The Social Origins of Human Rights: Protesting Political Violence in Colombia’s Oil Capital, 1919-2010", was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2015 as part of their Critical Human Rights series.  It has been published in Spanish by Editorial Universidad del Rosario.

Luis van Isschot’s newest research, which received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, concerns Latin American participation in global anti-colonial networks in the 1960s and 1970s.  His current book project focusses on civil society organized popular tribunals, including the Bertrand Russell Tribunal and the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, as well as numerous grassroots initiatives.  He is also working on a history of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.