Welcome, Johanna Amaya-Panche, PhD!

Johanna Amaya-Panche is a Lecturer in Latin American Politics at the Institute of the Americas and serve as the Director of the Master's Program in Latin American Studies at University College London. Additionally, she is a member of the Conflict & Change Cluster within the Department of Political Science. In 2023, she earned her PhD in Government from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. She has a Master of Research in Latin American Studies and a Bachelor of Honours in Political Science and International Relations from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. Before starting her PhD, she was an associate professor and consultant in Colombia, focusing on diversity, inclusion, peace-building, and community resilience.

She has also undertaken roles as a researcher and policy analyst for international organizations, including the European Union, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Global Survivors Fund, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Fund. The projects she been involved in have received funding from diverse sources, such as USAID, the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), and the European Union. Her research has been discussed through media platforms such as France 24, The Dialogue, The Canning House, and the Interetnich Committee for implementing the Peace Agreement in Colombia.

Her research interest is at the crossroads of International Relations and Development, Political Science and Research Methods. Her particular focus centres on the impact of international actors upon the intricate local dynamics of collective action strategies initiated by civil society agents to foster peace, resilience, and reconciliation amidst armed conflicts, focusing on gender and ethnic issues. Her primary sphere of interest encompasses Latin America and the Global South, which hold a special significance in her work. In addition to these core concerns, her academic curiosity extends to interlinked subjects. This encompasses exploring transitional justice, multiculturalism, ethnicity, equality, diversity, and the inclusion of diverse populations and an inquiry into research methodologies that underpin our comprehension of intertwined global and local phenomena.

This upcoming summer semester, her course “Conflict, Peace, and Foreign Aid in the Americas” will introduce students to the study of conflict background, dynamics of peacebuilding, and their relationship to foreign aid interventions in the Americas. It draws upon concepts from the general framework of foreign aid, conflict, and peace to understand specific cases where the interventions of foreign aid agencies play a significant role in the dynamics of peacebuilding, with particular attention to contemporary dynamics of the interrelations between these international actors and the local dynamics of conflict and peace. Students enrolling in the course will learn about various types of foreign aid agencies, analysing their implementation approaches and the impact and effectiveness of their intervention. For instance, the impact of the United States Aid Agency for Development (USAID) or the European Union in post-conflict countries using specific case studies from South and Central America, such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, or Colombia, to understand how the region of the Americas is currently facing interventions from foreign aid agencies and their respective challenges.