María-Paula Barrantes-Reynolds

I came to England after having completed two undergraduate degrees with honours in Law and Political Sciences at the University of Costa Rica, where I hold a position as a lecturer at the School of Political Sciences. I was fortunate enough to be admitted into Oxford and awarded the Ronaldo Falconer Award, as well as a scholarship from the University of Costa Rica.

Coming to Oxford was an academic and cultural landmark in my life. The Oxford tutorial system and the highly qualified academic staff and peers I met at the Latin American Centre and at St Antony’s College introduced me to new ways of learning and writing that greatly improved my academic skills.

Currently I am pursuing doctoral studies at the School of Law of the University of Leicester. My research project is on the tensions between human rights and indigenous forms of justice in the Constitution of Bolivia of 2009, an inter-disciplinary project that received the Modern Law Review Journal Scholarship 2012-2013. The degree in Latin American Studies greatly contributed to this project by encouraging me to step out of Central America and venture into the study of Bolivia. At the same time, the Area Studies approach enhanced my project by framing it within the wider perspective of Latin American history, economics and politics.