Bios Convergencias

Sigrid Arzt	is founder and co-director of Democracy, Human Rights and Security (Democracia, Derechos Humanos y Seguridad) in Mexico City. This non-governmental organization aims to serve as a link between government, academic researchers and representatives of civil society in order to support reforms that promote respect for human rights and the strengthening of Mexican democracy. Sigrid is also director of political analysis at the research center Fundacion Rafael Preciado, which does political and social policy studies, and is a doctoral candidate in international relations and comparative politics at the University of Miami. Her most recent book is Combating Organized Crime in Mexico: Mission [im] possible?, in the series Transnational Crime and Public Security: Challenges to Mexico and the United States (2003).
Fernando Canales Clariond	has had a prominent career in both the public and the private sectors. In 1997 he became the first governor from Partido Acción Nacional in the state of Nuevo León. He was appointed Mexico’s Secretary of the Economy by President Vicente Fox in 2003 and later became Secretary of Energy. In the private sector, Fernando Canales has served as chief executive officer and vice-president of IMSA and as a board member in several companies in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the United States, and Venezuela. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Law, a Master’s in Business Administration from ITESM, and completed specialization courses in Industrial Relations at the Institute of Higher Studies in the Hague, Netherlands, and French Language and Civilization at La Sorbonne in Paris, France.
Javier Corral Jurado	is a renowned journalist and politician in Mexico. In 1992, he was elected congressman for the state of Chihuahua and then was appointed to preside the State Congress. In 2000 he became senator and in 2004 he contended for the governorship of his state. His role as a journalist has led him to promote legislation of the mass media industry in his political agenda, and has published several books and articles on its reform. Javier Corral is a prominent columnist in various newspapers across the country and is a founding member of the Mexican Association for the Right of Access to Information.
José Antonio Crespo	is a professor at the Center for Research and Economic Education (CIDE). He has published extensively on issues of democracy and electoral systems, and conducted intensive studies on Mexican politics. Author of numerous articles and books, he most recently published The Risks of Presidential Succession: Players and Institutions Towards the Year 2000; Does the PRI have a Future? Between Democratic Survival and Total Disintegration [Grijalbo, 1998]; and "Political Coalitions" in Conciencia Mexicana.
Eduardo Engel	Eduardo Engel is a tenured Professor of Economics at Yale, where graduate students awarded him with the Professor of the Year Award in 2001 and then again in 2003. He has published extensively in the fields of macroeconomics, public finance and regulation, and received the Frisch Medal in 2002. Mr. Engel is a regular columnist in La Tercera and, in 2002, his fellow Chilean economists distinguished him with the Economist of the Year Award. His book Que Gane el Más Mejor: Mérito y Competencia en el Chile de Hoy, published recently and co-authored with Patricio Navia, has been a best-seller in Chile for the past 24 weeks. Eduardo Engel holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University, and is a civil engineer from Universidad de Chile.
Tricia Gabany-Guerrero	Tricia Gabany-Guerrero is Assistant Professor in Residence and Interim Director of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at The University of Connecticut. She is also the director of a non-profit, The Mexican Environmental & Cultural Research Institute. She is an anthropologist who has worked on migration, ethnohistory and archaeological research about Mexico for the past 15 years. She specializes in two areas in Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands at Ciudad Juarez - El Paso and the Purhepecha region of Central-West Mexico in Michoacan. She has several forthcoming publications on Mexican deportation, ethnohistory of Michoacan and archaeology of highland Michoacan. She works collaboratively in research with comunidades indigenas in Michoacan and with Mexican researchers.
Samuel González Ruiz	Former Mexican Chief of Prosecutors against Organized Crime in charge of delineating the strategies to fight cartels and high ranking officials' corruption. He has served in various diplomatic offices and has vast academic experience. González Ruiz is a former UN expert in the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime and a Former instructor of IDLO Kabul, where he Headed Prosecutors in Organized Crime, corruption and Money Laundering.
Chappell Lawson	is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. Professor Lawson's major interests are Latin American politics, Mexican politics, democratization, political communication, political behavior, and U.S. foreign policy. His current research focuses on the relationship between citizens’ political skills and the quality of democracy across a range of countries. Professor Lawson’s recent books include, Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and Media Opening in Mexico (University of California Press, 2002) and Mexico's Pivotal Democratic Election (Stanford University Press, 2003), co-edited with Jorge Domínguez. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in British Journal of Political Science, Latin American Research Review, Mexican Studies, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs. Professor Lawson was a National Fellow at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University (2002-2003) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego (1998-99). He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999. Before joining the MIT faculty, he served as a Director of Inter-American Affairs on the National Security Council.
Paulina Ochoa	(Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University)
Pablo Piccato	works on the social and political history of modern Mexico. He is particularly interested in crime, honor and the development of the public sphere. He received his B.A. from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. His published work includes City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Duke University Press, 2001), Congreso y Revolución: El parlamentarismo en la XXVI Legislatura (Cámara de Diputados, 1991), the edition of El Poder Legislativo en las décadas revolucionarias (Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1997), and, with Cristina Sacristán, of Actores, espacios y debates en la historia de la esfera pública en la ciudad de México (Instituto Mora, 2005). Piccato is associate professor at the Department of History, where he is Director of Undergraduate Studies, and assistant director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
Alicia Schmidt Camacho	is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Yale University. She has published articles about gender violence, migration, labor, and human rights in the Mexico-U.S. border region. Her book, Migrant Imaginaries: Cultural Politics in the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands, is forthcoming from NYU Press in 2007. She is at work on The Carceral Border: Social Violence and Governmentality at the U.S.-Mexican Frontier, a study of violence, state practices, and human rights at the Mexico-U.S. border from 1965 to the present. She serves on the board of Junta for Progressive Action, a community agency serving the Latina/o community of Fair Haven. Alicia lives with her partner Stephen Pitti and their children, Antonio and Thalia in New Haven, CT.
Cecilia Soto González	is a prominent Mexican politician. From 1988 to 1991, she represented the State of Sonora in the local congress, and from 1991 to 1994 she did it at the federal level. Ms. Soto is a former candidate to the 1994-2000 Presidency for the Labor Party (Partido del Trabajo) and in 2000 was appointed Mexican Ambassador to Brazil, post that she kept until 2006.