Felipe Cala

Spanish and Portuguese, PhD candidate

fcala@princeton.edu
phone: 609-815-6276
C.V.

Felipe Cala is a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton University. He holds a degree in Law and a degree in Literature from the Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá (Colombia); and an M.Phil in European Literature and Culture from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Before coming to Princeton, he worked for the Colombian government, in a variety of issues ranging from Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, to political advocacy and strategic communications. He is currently a free-lance journalist for several cultural magazines in Colombia.

In Princeton, Felipe’s research is focused on the relationship between culture and public policy in contemporary Latin America. How does policy, cultural or otherwise, define the way we perceive culture? How do cultural initiatives modify conducts and realities to which policy has no access? How do cultural initiatives influence the way we approach public issues, such as democracy, citizenship and Human Rights? These are the types of questions he wishes to address in his doctoral dissertation, in which law and cultural rights will certainly play a major role. Felipe is the recipient of a 2008 Liman Fellowship.

Publications

"¿Puede hablar el latinoamericano?: América Latina en/y la teoría postcolonial", forthcoming.

"More Carrots than Sticks: Antanas Mockus's Civic Culture Policy in Bogotá", forthcoming.

"Social Violence for Global Consumption: The Cultural Politics of Favela Rising", forthcoming.