Philip Brenner is professor of international relations and affiliate professor of history at American University. He is the coauthor of Cuba’s Quest for Sovereignty: A Five Hundred Year History (forthcoming) and Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (2002) and coeditor of The Cuba Reader: The Making of a Revolutionary Society (1988). A specialist on U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, Dr. Brenner is a member of the board of directors of the Center for International Policy and the advisory boards of the National Security Archive and Center for Democracy in the Americas.
Marguerite Rose Jiménez teaches public policy in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University’s School of Public Affairs. Her research focuses on public health history, vaccine diplomacy, and global health and development, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has published several articles on international medical cooperation, the Cuban economy, and U.S.-Cuban relations.
John M. Kirk is professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has been traveling to Cuba since 1976 and has written and coedited several books about Cuba, José Martí, Cuban foreign relations, culture, and the Cuban development model. For the past seven years, he has been working on Cuban medical internationalism and is the coauthor of Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals (2009). He is just finishing a second book on the topic. He is the editor of the Contemporary Cuba series with the University Press of Florida.
William M. LeoGrande is professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (1998) and Cuba’s Policy in Africa (1980), coauthor of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (2014) and Confronting Revolution: Security through Diplomacy in Central America (1986), and coeditor of The Cuba Reader: The Making of a Revolutionary Society (1988), and Political Parties and Democracy in Central America (1992). He has written widely in the field of Latin American politics and U.S. policy toward Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Central America and Cuba, with articles appearing in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, New Republic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, Le Monde Diplomatique, and other journals and newspapers.
Carlos Alzugaray Treto is a former Cuban diplomat who currently serves as book review editor of the Cuban journal Temas. He has been vice rector of the Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales; a senior scholar at the University of Havana’s Center for the Study of the United States; a visiting professor at Beloit College, the University of Winnipeg, and the City University of New York; and a visiting scholar at American University, the European University Institute, and the University of the Basque Country. He is author of Crónica de un fracaso imperial (2000) and coauthor of La integración política latinoamericana y caribeña: Un proyecto comunitario para el siglo XXI (2001). His articles on U.S.-Cuban relations, Cuban foreign policy, and international affairs have appeared in journals and anthologies published in Cuba, North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Denise Blum is associate professor in social foundations at the School of Educational Studies at Oklahoma State University. She is an educational anthropologist and the author of Cuban Youth and Revolutionary Values: Educating the New Socialist Citizen (2011) and coeditor of Globalization and Corporatization of Education: Limits and Liminality of the Market Mantra (2014). Her research incorporates a political-economic approach while studying social and cultural issues related to schooling and identity.
Michael J. Bustamante is a PhD candidate in Latin American and Caribbean history at Yale University and a former research associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has published articles in Foreign Affairs, Current History, and the Wilson Quarterly, among others.
Marce Cameron is a journalist and the coordinator of the Australian Youth-Student Revolutionary Tour of Cuba and Venezuela as well as the membership secretary of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society.
Mariela Castro Espín is director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and a global leader in the movement for LGBT rights. She is the president of the Cuban Multidisciplinary Centre for the Study of Sexuality, president of the National Commission for Treatment of Disturbances of Gender Identity, and director of the journal Sexología y Sociedad.
Soraya M. Castro Mariño is professor and senior researcher at the Center for the Study of International Politics, Institute of International Relations, Cuba. She previously was a professor at Havana University. She is the coeditor most recently of Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World (2012). She also coedited issue 41 of Cuban Studies (2010), coedited and contributed to Estados Unidos y América Latina. Los Nuevos Desafíos: ¿Unión o Desunión? (2007), coauthored Retreat from Reason: U.S.-Cuban Academic Relations and the Bush Administration (2006), and coauthored EEUU: Dinámica Interna y Política Exterior (2003). She has published numerous articles in journals and chapters in books on U.S.-Cuban relations, U.S foreign policy, and the U.S. foreign policymaking process.
María Auxiliadora César is the coordinator of the Center of Cuban Studies at the University of Brasilia and a research associate in the Social Service Department. A trained sociologist and social assistant, her research has focused on social policies and their impact on well-being and gender.
Armando Chaguaceda is a Cuban historian and political scientist who specializes in Latin American politics. He is a member of the Institute of Historico-Social Research at the University of Havana and of the Social Observatory of Latin America and the coordinator of the working group Anticapitalisms and Emergent Sociabilities of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and an adjunct professor at the University of Veracruz. He is the author and editor of various texts, including Democracy, Participation, and Citizenship: Latin American Perspectives (2008).
Margaret E. Crahan is senior research scholar and Director of the Cuba Program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University. She has held the Kozmetsky Distinguished Professorship at St. Edward’s University, the Dorothy Epstein Chair at Hunter College, and the Henry R. Luce Chair at Occidental College. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Edward’s University, vice president of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, and a board member of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. She is the author, editor, or coeditor of more than 100 books and articles, including Religion, Culture and Society: The Case of Cuba (2011), The Wars on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and U.S. Foreign Policy (2004), and Human Rights and Basic Human Needs in the Americas (1982).
Simon C. Darnell is assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto in Canada. He was a research fellow at the Department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University and has worked with the Commonwealth Advisory Board on Sport.
Antonio Aja Díaz is a professor, researcher, and director at the University of Havana’s Centro de Estudios Demográficos and the director of the Program on the Study of Latinos in the United States at Casa de las Américas. He has been a visiting scholar and professor at universities in Canada, France, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, and Venezuela. He is the coauthor of Cuba y Cayo Hueso: Una historia compartida (2006) and author of Al cruzar las fronteras (2009).
Jorge I. Domínguez is the Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico and vice provost for international affairs at Harvard University. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, Cuban Studies, Foro internacional, and Journal of Cold War Studies and has been director of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and president of the Latin American Studies Association. He is the author or editor of dozens of books and articles, including Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean (1998) and Between Compliance and Conflict: East Asia, Latin America, the “New” Pax Americana (2005), and is coeditor of Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and Challenges in the 21st Century (2012).
María Isabel Domínguez is associate professor and scientific director of the Psychological and Sociological Research Center in Havana, Cuba, where she specializes in themes related to youth and generations. She holds a PhD in sociology from the Cuban Academy of Sciences.
Tracey Eaton is assistant professor of journalism at Flagler College, heads the investigative Cuba Money Project, and writes the blog Along the Malecón. A former Fulbright scholar, he has been the Cuba bureau chief and Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, metropolitan editor of the Houston Chronicle, and a staff writer for the Miami Herald.
H. Michael Erisman is emeritus professor of international politics and Latin America at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. He is the coauthor of Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals (2009) and coeditor of Cuban Foreign Policy Confronts a New International Order (1991) and Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy: The Impact of the “Special Period” (2006). His extensive work on Cuba’s foreign relations also includes Cuba’s International Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy (1985) and Cuba’s Foreign Relations in a Post-Soviet World (2000).
Richard E. Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego, and the book reviewer for the Western Hemisphere section of Foreign Affairs magazine. He served as a special assistant for national security affairs and the senior director of the Office of Inter-American Affairs under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as president of the Inter-American Dialogue and executive vice president of the Overseas Development Council. He has authored more than 200 articles, monographs, and books, including Soft Landing in Cuba? Emerging Entrepreneurs and Middle Classes (2013).
Reina Fleitas Ruiz is professor at the University of Havana. She received her doctorate from the University of Havana and is the coeditor of Desarollo humano local: Una antología (2004).
Edmundo García is a Cuban artist who lives in Miami and produces the radio program La Noche se Mueve. He is a frequent commentator about the work of Cuban exile writers and artists.
Kevin Gatter is completing a master’s degree in comparative and regional studies at American University and is a staff member of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. He has done research on Easter Island’s independence movement and is interested in issues about race and ethnicity in the Americas.
Graciela González Olmedo is a professor of sociology at the University of Havana. She has written widely on the impact that social change has had on women, including research on prostitution, and she is working on a major project about the role of women in Cuban society in the twenty-first century.
Conner Gorry has been writing guidebooks since 1998 and moved to Cuba a few years later. She is a coauthor of Lonely Planet: South America on a Shoestring (2002). She has written extensively on public health matters in Cuba and works for MEDICC in Havana.
Katrin Hansing is associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Baruch College in New York. Prior to her tenure at Baruch, she was the associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami. She is the author of numerous publications, including the book Rasta, Race, and Revolution: The Emergence and Development of the Rastafari Movement in Socialist Cuba (2006), and recently completed her first documentary film, Freddy Ilanga: Che’s Swahili Translator about Cuban-African relations.
Adrian H. Hearn is convenor of international relations at the University of Sydney China Studies Centre. His research examines the social challenges and opportunities arising from Asia-Pacific economic integration. He has explored these questions in collaboration with the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, AusAID, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and others. He is a coeditor of China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (2011) and author of Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development (2008).
Ted A. Henken is professor of Latin American studies and sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (2012–2014). He is the coauthor of Small Enterprise and Public Policy in Revolutionary Cuba (2014) and the coeditor of Cuba in Focus (2013). He has published articles on Cuba in Cuban Studies, Latin American Research Review, Latino Studies, Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, and Cuba in Transition and articles about the Cuban blogosphere in Nueva Sociedad and Espacio Laical.
Rafael Hernández is senior research fellow at the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana “Juan Marinello” and the editor of Temas, a Cuban quarterly in the field of social sciences and the humanities. He has taught at the University of Havana and as a visiting professor at Harvard University and Columbia University. He is the coauthor of Looking at Cuba (2003) and The History of Havana (2008) and coeditor of Debating U.S.-Cuban Relations (2012).
Monica Hirst is professor in the Department of Economics and Administration at Quilmes National University and professor of international relations at Torcuato Di Tella University, both in Buenos Aires. She served as chief researcher for the International Relations Program of FLACSO-Argentina for fifteen years and has been a consultant to the UN Development Program and the Ford Foundation. Her books include Crisis del estado e intervención internacional (2009), The United States and Brazil (1994), and Democracia, seguridad, e integración: América Latina en un mundo en transición (1996).
Robert Huish is assistant professor in the Department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University in Canada. He is the author of Where No Doctor Has Gone Before: Cuba’s Place in the Global Health Landscape (2013) and coeditor of Globetrotting or Global Citizenship: Perils and Potential of International Experiential Learning (2014). His research focuses on community-based health advocacy and the impacts of Cuban medical internationalism as a counterhegemonic force in the global South.
Antoni Kapcia is professor of Latin American history and director of the Centre for Research on Cuba at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Cuba in Revolution: A History since the Fifties (2008), Havana: The Making of Cuban Culture (2005), and Cuba: Island of Dreams (2001); coauthor of Literary Culture in Cuba: Revolution, Nation-Building and the Book (2012); and coeditor of The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society (2008).
C. William Keck is editor in chief of the journal MEDICC Review, professor emeritus in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, and adjunct professor of family medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. A former director of health for the City of Akron, Ohio, he serves as chair of the Council on Linkages, a national organization that works to establish and strengthen linkages between academia and public health practice. He is the coeditor of Principles of Public Health Practice (2009).
Emily J. Kirk is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nottingham, where she is the curator of the Hennessy Collection at the Centre for Research on Cuba. Her current research focuses on CENESEX, and she has published articles on this and on Cuban medical internationalism in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Cuban Studies, and Cubadebate.
Hal Klepak is professor emeritus of history and strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada. He serves as consultant on inter-American security affairs to the Commander of the Canadian Army and in a series of posts as consultant to the Canadian foreign and defense ministries, international organizations, and academic boards. He is the author of Raúl Castro and Cuba: A Military Story (2012), Cuba’s Military 1990–2005, Revolutionary Soldiers in Counter-Revolutionary Times (2005), and Natural Allies? Canadian and Mexican Views on International Security (1996).
Sinan Koont is emeritus professor of economics at Dickinson College, where he helped to develop and then taught a novel multidisciplinary course, “Cuba,” which included a three-week student program in Cuba. He is the author of Sustainable Urban Agriculture in Cuba (2011).
Par Kumaraswami is lecturer in Latin American cultural studies and the codirector of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Manchester, England. A specialist on Cuban cultural policy, especially with respect to literature, he is the coauthor of Literary Culture in Cuba: Revolution, Nation-Building and the Book (2012) and coeditor of Rethinking the Cuban Revolution Nationally and Regionally (2012) and Making Waves (2008).
Saul Landau was a columnist for Progreso Weekly and vice chair of the board of the Institute for Policy Studies when he died in 2013. He had been a professor of digital media at California State Polytechnic University and a visiting professor at American University. The author of more than twenty books and producer/director of more than forty films, he was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, an Emmy (for Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang), and the Bernardo O’Higgins Award, the highest honor the Chilean government bestows on a noncitizen, for his work to help restore democracy to Chile. His film Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? (2012) is a history of the U.S. terror campaign against Cuba that provides a context for his chapter on the Cuban Five.
Sandra Levinson is a scholar-activist who is a leading authority on Cuban culture. She helped to found the Center for Cuban Studies in New York in 1972 and serves as its executive director and curator of the Center’s Cuban Art Space, which collects and displays Cuban art, photographs, and posters. A contributor to many newspapers and journals, she was an editor of Ramparts Magazine and has taught at universities in New York City.
Esteban Morales is a political economist who has focused on the challenges for small countries in the Western Hemisphere and on issues related to race. As a professor at the University of Havana, he served for eighteen years as the director of the Center for the Study of the United States. He is the author of Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality (2013), coauthor of United States-Cuban Relations: A Critical History (2008), and coeditor of Subject to Solution: Problems in US-Cuban Relations (1989). His coauthored 2011 study De la confrontación a los intentos de “normalización”: La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba” received the Premio Anual de la Crítica Científico-Técnica from the Cuban Book Institute.
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba’s most renowned poets who has published more than a dozen collections of poetry. Her work has centered on the themes of the Afro-Cuban experience and women and on Caribbean culture. In 1986, she won the Cuban Critics Prize for Piedra Pulida, in 2001 she won Cuba’s National Prize for Literature, and in 2013 she was elected president of the writers’ section of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC).
Blanca Múnster Infante is a professor of economics at the University of Havana and a scholar at the university’s Center for Research on the World Economy.
Armando Nova González is a professor of economics and a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana. A specialist in agricultural economics, he is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and books on the political economy of Cuban agriculture, including La agricultura en Cuba: Evolución y trayectoría (1959–2005) (2006).
Manuel Orozco is a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue. He is chair of Central America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute and senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. He is the author of América Latina y el Caribe: Desarrollo, migración y remesas (2012), Remittances: Global Opportunities for International Person-to-Person Money Transfers (2005), and International Norms and Mobilization for Democracy (2002).
Leonardo Padura Fuentes is the most popular novelist in Cuba as well as a screenwriter and essayist. His series of six detective novels featuring Inspector Mario Conde have been translated into twenty languages. In 2012, he was awarded Cuba’s National Prize for Literature. His most recent novel is Herejes (Heretics), and the English language edition of The Man Who Loved Dogs was published in 2014.
Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva is professor in the Department of Economics and a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana. He is the author of Miradas a la economía cubana, volumes I (2009), II (2010), III (2012), and IV (2013), and Reflexiones sobre la economía cubana (2005, 2006) and coeditor of Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and Challenges in the 21st Century (2012), The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century (2005), and Cuba: Hacia una estrategia de desarrollo para los inicios del siglo XXI. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Carleton University, Sorbonne University, and Columbia University.
Philip Peters is president of the Cuba Research Center (Alexandria, Virginia), a nonprofit organization founded in 2013. He produces the blog The Cuban Triangle and is the author of numerous monographs on politics and economics in Cuba. He previously served as vice president of the Lexington Institute and as a State Department appointee of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. A frequent lecturer on Cuba to diverse groups, he has also testified before Congress and the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Camila Piñeiro Harnecker is a professor at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana. Her research centers on alternative forms of economic organization such as self-management and democratic planning. She received her MA in sustainable development from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the editor of Cooperatives and Socialism: A View from Cuba (2012).
Clotilde Proveyer Cervantes is a sociologist and professor at the University of Havana. She has been a member of Cuba’s National Group for the Prevention of and Attention to Domestic Violence. She is the coeditor of Social Work in Cuba and Sweden: Achievements and Prospects (2005).
Archibald R. M. Ritter is an economist and distinguished research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. He produces the blog The Cuba Economy and has published numerous articles on Cuba’s development policies. He is the author of The Economic Development of Revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and Performance (1974) and Cuba in the International System: Integration and Normalization (1995) and editor of The Cuban Economy (2004).
Ana M. Ruiz Aguirre is a PhD candidate in cultural studies at Queen’s University (Ontario, Canada). Her research focuses on the way Cuban art and politics intersect and influence each other and Cuban society.
Daniel Salas González is a professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Havana. He has written for the Juventud Rebelde newspaper and was a guest editor and contributor for La Gaceta de Cuba.
Jorge Mario Sánchez Egozcue is a professor of economics at the University of Havana and senior researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Columbia University, and Harvard University and has lectured at universities and research centers throughout Europe and the United States. He has been cochair of the Cuba section of the Latin American Studies Association, and his articles have been published in numerous scholarly journals.
Ann Marie Stock is a professor of Hispanic studies and the director of film and media studies at the College of William and Mary. She is the author of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (2009) and editor of Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (2009). She is the founder and director of Cuban Cinema Classics, an initiative that makes available subtitled Cuban documentaries in the United States.
Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and director of Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She writes a biweekly column for Folha de São Paulo and serves on the international advisory board of the Brazilian Center for International Relations. She is the author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (2009, 2013) and Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (2002), which won the American Historical Association’s Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar.
Carlos Varela is a singer-songwriter whose work is considered among the most representative of la nueva canción cubana (the new Cuban song movement). In 1980, his songs became part of the Movimiento de la Nueva Trova (Movement of New Folk Music), and he helped to develop la novísima trova, which is characterized by its politically charged lyrics and social commentary. He has performed in concerts worldwide, including in Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. He lives in Havana, Cuba. In April 2013, Carlos Varela and his band returned to Miami to celebrate his thirty-year career.
Sjamme van de Voort is a PhD student in the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark. His doctoral project is “Building Cuban Culture: How Official Narratives Become Public Memory.”
María del Carmen Zabala Argüelles is professor of economics at the University of Havana and academic coordinator of the university’s program on social development and a member of FLACSO-Cuba. She is the author of Jefatura femenina de hogar, pobreza urbana y exclusión social: Una perspectiva desde la subjetividad en el contexto cubano (2010) and editor of Pobreza, exclusión social y discriminación étnico-racial en América Latina y el Caribe (2008).