We are pleased to announce that Dr Juan Luis Ossa, Associate Professor of the School of Government at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and Associate Researcher at the Centro de Estudios Públicos (Santiago, Chile), will be an Academic Visitor at the LAC from this coming August to February 2020. Dr Ossa, who was the Executive Director of the Centro de Estudios de Historia Política at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, will be working on his new book on post-independent Chile during his visit to Oxford. In particular, he will be studying the main ideological discussions, events, actors and historiographical debates during the 1820s. The general hypothesis of the book proposes that the liberal principles that informed the 1833 Constitution and the Civil Code of 1855 were established in the 1820s. Principles such as the separation of the powers of the state, equality before the law, secular education supported by the state, and the end of privileges were all matters that were discussed vehemently in the press of the eighteen-twenties. Those are the key elements of Chilean liberalism, and it is in those areas where the accent should be placed when seeking a better understanding of the representative regime that still governs the country.
Dr Ossa obtained his BA in History from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and his DPhil in Modern History from St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. His areas of research have focused on the political history of nineteenth-century Chile and Latin America, with special emphasis on independence and the process of state-building. He has published in different journals, such as the Journal of Latin American Studies, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, Revista de Indias, Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, Parliament, Estates and Representation and Bulletin of Latin American Research. His book Armies, politics and revolution. Chile, 1808-1826 appeared with Liverpool University Press in 2014. He is the editor of volume 1 of theHistoria Política de Chile, 1810-2010, which was published in 2017 by Fondo de Cultura Económica. In 2017 he received the award for the best researcher in the areas of the social sciences and humanities of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.