Pardee Center Hosts First Event of New “Violence and Society” Seminar Series

On October 15, 2024, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future hosted the first event of its “Violence and Society” seminar series. The event explored how criminal and state violence have become a defining feature of everyday life and politics in Latin America, and the ways in which urban violence is shaping urban governance in the region.

The panel discussion, which was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, brought together political scientists and sociologists working on a wide range of political responses to violence in the region. The panel included Rebecca Bell-Martin (Tecnológico de Monterrey, México), Rebecca Hanson (University of Florida, Harvard-DRCLAS), and Markus-Michael Müller (Roskilde University, Denmark). The discussion was moderated by Boston University Assistant Professor of Sociology Ana Villarreal.

The series, which is convened by Prof. Villarreal as part of her work as a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogues among sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and historians conducting cutting-edge scholarship on violence, in the hope of together producing a more transnational and combined approach to these issues than is currently available.