Rekindling regional collaboration in Latin America: CompaRe – LDE mission to São Paulo
Latin America has seen multiple waves of regional integration, with various levels of success. The last wave foundered after the rise of nationalist politicians. But new developments require a reconsideration, including a number of new, more collaborative-minded presidents coming to power and urgent regional challenges that simply require effective collaboration, including climate change, migration and economic stagnation, as well as the rising global geo-political tension.
Consequently, now is the time to reconsider and reimagine regional collaboration in Latin America, and hence to bring together colleagues from the collaboration between Leiden, Delft and Erasmus universities (LDE) and Latin America colleagues to share expertise on the key substantive challenges in the region and on comparative and EU regional integration.
To that end, in November 2023 a delegation of LDE researchers, organized by CompaRe, visited the University of São Paulo (USP), the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and the funding agency FAPESP in São Paulo, Brazil. USP is the leading university in Latin America and a top 100 university globally. UNICAMP is also in the top 3 universities of Latin America. Both are boosted by the significant economic firepower of FAPESP, the funding agency of the state of São Paulo.
The delegation focussed on the key challenges of migration, climate change and economic integration. It met with multiple scholars and societal actors, laying the foundation for future collaboration, including a kick-off conference on Rekindling regional collaboration in Latin America that is planned for next year.
The delegation and planned conference are supported by a grant from LDE: the collaboration between Leiden University, the Technichal University of Delft and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam.
For more information, also about possible collaboration with Latin America, contact Armin Cuyvers, the director of CompaRe.