Planning is underway for the inaugural Regional Symposium, LASA Central America, which is scheduled to take place from August 4 to 7, 2026, at the University of Costa Rica in San José. The Program Committee has been working hard to evaluate the hundreds of proposals submitted to this new LASA initiative. Before discussing LASA Central America, I’d like to share a bit about the regional symposium initiative and how it seeks to strengthen LASA as it enters its 60th year as the premier association of Latin American scholars and researchers.
During my time as president of LASA, I attended a series of meetings about the financial and sustainability challenges that academic associations were experiencing and alternative models to large academic conferences. These challenges, which emerged prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, were exacerbated by the lockdown and the turn to virtual gatherings, the increasing cost of international travel, and the growing precarization of the university—especially in Latin America.
These and other factors mean that the International Congress that LASA organizes each year is not accessible to all of our members nor to others in the region and beyond who wish to participate, even when it is fully hybrid. Half of our members reside in Latin America. While many of them can travel to the international Congress, many cannot. Analyzing the data from LASA2024 in Bogotá, I realized that while Central Americans residing in the United States, Canada, and Europe, as well as Central America specialists of diverse nationalities were well-represented, the number of participants residing in Central America was astonishingly low.
Out of these concerns over cost and access, I proposed to the Executive Council that, in addition to the annual international Congress, LASA should offer smaller, more focused regional meetings to stimulate scholarly exchange and strengthen regional academic networks. The regional symposium initiative aims to create a new space for LASA members and others conducting research on critical issues in specific regions of Latin America to share their research, while also helping to strengthen local and regional networks. By design, these gatherings were conceptualized as small, intimate affairs at which participants would organize panels, roundtables, and book presentations that focus on the region where the regional symposium is being held. Comparative panels are allowed if they include a substantive focus on the featured region. Organizing such regional gatherings would decentralize LASA and make it more accessible to members and nonmembers alike.
In March 2025, the Executive Council approved the LASA Regional Symposium initiative and shortly thereafter, the organization of the inaugural Regional Symposium in Central America. A Program Committee chaired by a former president of LASA will oversee the academic program of the regional symposia, in close coordination of any relevant LASA Sections; LASA will organize the program logistics. The regional symposium initiative will create new opportunities for collaboration between LASA and the Sections. To keep costs low and make these meetings more accessible, LASA will partner with local universities. Membership will not be required to submit proposals or to participate in the regional symposium, and registration costs for participants from the region will be modest to facilitate the participation of Latin American students, scholars, activists, and practitioners. This will provide opportunities for academics and students to connect with other critical knowledge producers, including activists, practitioners, journalists, policymakers, and artists, helping to strengthen the local scholarly community with others researching key issues in the host region. In the future, LASA will organize regional symposia in the Caribbean, the Andes, and the Southern Cone. LASA might consider other regional configurations as well, such as the Amazon, the US-Mexico Borderlands, the Triple Frontier Region, among others.
For this inaugural convening, the Program Committee worked closely with the LASA Secretariat and the Central America Section to prepare the Regional Symposium in Costa Rica. The Program Committee and LASA Executive Secretary Milagros Pereyra-Rojas worked together to develop a partnership with the University of Costa Rica, which generously agreed to host the meeting on its campus in San José. The Program Committee has met frequently with the Central America Section to coordinate the program. A member of the Central America section leadership was invited to join the Program Committee. We consulted the section leadership about possible conference location sites and dates. Section leaders graciously participated in the process of reviewing proposal submissions, and we continue to work together on different aspects of the program. In addition, the Program Committee secured funding from the Ford Foundation to provide travel grants for individuals delivering papers at LASA Central America. A special thanks to Ximena Andión, the Regional Director for Mexico and Central America at the Ford Foundation, and the rest of her team, for their generous support for this initiative.
Over 900 proposals were submitted in response to the call for papers for LASA Central America, Centroamérica en la encrucijada: Resistir en tiempos de asedio. At a time of profound crisis in the region, LASA Central America will bring together knowledge producers from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, as well as specialists on Central America from around the world. Central America is experiencing the most dramatic process of democratic erosion, reduction of civic space, and authoritarian consolidation in Latin America. At the same time, the region has seen a dramatic expansion of organized crime, mass land dispossession, and increasing human rights abuses. The LASA Central America regional symposium will provide a critical space to discuss these issues and highlight cutting-edge academic research on these and related topics. It will also help to strengthen the networks between academics, social movement activists, journalists, policymakers, and think tank researchers that are critical to civic space and independent research in the region. While we encourage in-person participation, to ensure accessibility, LASA Central America will be fully hybrid.
It is crucial to continue revitalizing LASA as a space for the production of critical knowledge on key issues and challenges in the Americas. This includes providing new platforms and opportunities for our members to collaborate and share their research, as well as creating networks, structures, and resources that promote civic engagement. In a world that is changing dramatically—especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence of neoconservative and authoritarian governments across the Americas—we must find new ways to empower both our association and its members to respond effectively and creatively to these evolving challenges.
LASA is critical to the fabric of civil society in the Americas. It foments the dissemination of research on critical subjects, from authoritarian regression to inequality and development, to the impact of climate change for Indigenous, migrant and low-income communities. It plays a key role as an advocate for academic freedom and human rights across the Americas. It has developed diverse platforms for its members to reach diverse audiences in academia, civil society, media, the private sector, and government. LASA also has the potential to enhance its leadership role in civil society by convening these smaller, regional meetings to promote academic exchanges and networking among academics, practitioners, activists, and policymakers in more local settings. The regional symposium initiative also offers LASA an opportunity to build partnerships with local universities in Latin America and to strengthen its role as an advocate for its membership, particularly at a time of growing precarity of academic life, increased attacks against academic freedom and freedom of association, and shrinking civic spaces that threaten democratic coexistence and the exercise of rights across the region. As LASA enters its 60th year, such innovative new programs aimed at decentralizing and democratizing LASA will contribute to ensuring the sustainability and relevance of our Association for years to come.