A huge congratulations goes out to Dr. Cristina Rojas, Director of Carleton’s Institute of Political Economy and a founding member of LACS. Dr. Rojas is being honored for her distinguished contribution to the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/l’Association canadienne d’études latino-américaines et des Caraïbes (CALACS) and to the goals and ideals that it represents. She has been designated the 2019 Distinguished Fellow Award. Please see below for more details of the award.

Dear Cristina,

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, I am very pleased to inform you that you have been unanimously selected as the recipient of the Association’s 2019 Distinguished Fellow Award. CALACS confers this distinction to individual members who have made an outstanding contribution to the Association and whose actions have contributed to furthering its Vision and Mission. You have shown a deep commitment to the Association, its progress and wellbeing, co-chairing the CALACS Conference Organizing Committee in 2013 and serving as President of our Association at various critical periods. We especially appreciate your ceaseless efforts to welcome students from all origins and disciplines to CALACS.

In addition, your professional activities have contributed substantially to advance CALACS’s mission of providing an infrastructure and forum to support an interdisciplinary, international community of academics, researchers, young scholars, NGOs, Latin American and Caribbean communities and policy makers in Canada and beyond. Among many other activities, we note your contribution to the creation of the Latin American Program at Carleton University and its conversion into a Minor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, your dedication to your many undergraduate and graduate students, your publication of numerous articles and books, and the professional networks you have created and maintained, all of which have made such a significant contribution to the field.

The Distinguished Fellow Award will be conferred to you in a special ceremony at the CALACS conference in Toronto, May 10-12, 2019.  We would also like to organize a special panel in your honour at the conference.

Best regards,
Julián Durazo Herrmann
Professeur de politique comparée
Directeur du programme de maîtrise en science politique
Département de science politique – Université du Québec à Montréal
Président de l’Association canadienne d’études latino-américaines et des Caraïbes