Dr Harmer teaches the following courses in the department:

At undergraduate level:

HY239: People, Power and Protest in Latin America, c.1895 to the Present Day

At postgraduate level:

HY444: The Cold War in Latin America

HY490: Dissertation MA in Modern History

She supervises the following PhD students:

Dr Harmer is happy to supervise dissertations relating to twentieth-century Latin American history.

Previous PhD students include:

Dr Harmer's first book, Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2011), won the Luciano Tomassini International Relations Book Award in 2013 and has now been published in Spanish as El gobierno de Allende y la Guerra Fria Interamericana (Santiago, Chile: UDP, 2013). The book focuses on the international history of Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-73) and Chile's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States during this period. As well as examining the relationships between Santiago, Havana and Washington, it also deals with Chile's place within a multidimensional Cold War struggle in the Southern Cone in the early 1970s; Brazil's involvement in that struggle and its relationship with the Nixon administration; and Latin America's role in North-South debates.

Dr Harmer's second book, Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), is the history of Chile, youth politics and the revolutionary left in the long 1960s. It deals with Cuba’s influence in Chile after 1959, transnational guerrilla movements, the Unidad Popular years, exile and solidarity. It examines what it meant to be a female revolutionary in the age of Che Guevara and Salvador Allende and, in doing so, it tells the history of women and gender politics in Cold War Latin America.

Her newest book, a co-edited volume with Alberto Martín Alvares, Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left, was released by University Press of Florida in April 2021.

Beyond these books Dr  Harmer has published articles, chapters and edited other volumes on Latin America as follows:

• Special Issue: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50. Radical Americas, 6:1 (2021) (co-edited; with introduction co-written with Marian Schlotterbeck and Joshua Frens-String, "Fifty years after Popular Unity: Chile’s estallido social in historical context" and article self-authored, "Towards a global history of the Unidad Popular").
• "Un replanteamiento de la Guerra Fría en América Latina anteel centenario de la Revolución Bolchevique" in La Revolución Bolchevique y América Latina: Apropriaciones, experiencias y trayectorias edited by Santiago Aránguiz Pinto (Santiago: Ril Editores, 2020)
• "The 'Cuban Question' and the Cold War in Latin America, 1959–1964", Journal of Cold War Studies, 21:3 (2019).
• Virtual Special Issue: The Cold War in Latin America. Journal of Latin American Studies (2018) (with introduction).
• Special Issue: Revolutionary Transnationalism in Historical Perspective: Militant Networks in the Americas. Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 28:2 (2017) (with introduction, co-edited with Alberto Martín Alvarez).
• "Dialogue or Détente: Henry Kissinger, Latin America, and the Prospects for a New Inter-American Understanding, 1973-1977" in Foreign Policy at the Periphery: The Shifting Margins of US International Relations since World War II, eds. Bevan Sewell and Maria Ryan, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (2017)
• "'Serémos como el Che': Chilean elenos, Bolivia and the cause of Latinoamericanismo, 1967-1970"Contemporanea (2016).
  
• ‘Commonality, Specificity, and Difference: Histories and Historiographies of the Americas’ in Cooperation and Hegemony in US-Latin American Relations: Revisiting the Western Hemisphere Idea, eds. Juan Pablo Scarfi and Andrew R. Tillman, Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2016)
• "The View from Havana: Chilean Exiles in Cuba and Early Resistance to Chile's Dictatorship, 1973–1977", Hispanic American Historical Review, 96:1 (2016)
• Chile y la Guerra Fría Global (Pontificia Univesidad Católica de Chile: RIL Editores, 2014)
• “Fractious allies: Chile, the United States and the Cold War, 1973-1976”, Diplomatic History, 37: 1 (2013)
• “Two, three, many revolutions: Cuba and the prospects for revolutionary change in Latin America, 1967–1975”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 45:1 (2013)
• “Brazil's cold war in the southern Cone, 1970–1975”, Cold War History, 12:4 (2012)

2023

Dr Tanya Harmer appointed Visiting Professor in Chile

Dr Tanya Harmer was appointed as a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Católica de Chile's Institute of History. Starting in March, she will be teaching a new postgraduate course Mobility, Migration and Refuge in Americas during the Cold War. 

2021

Thesis award for former PhD student

Dr Eline van Ommen won the British International History Group’s Michael Dockrill Memorial Thesis Prize for 2021. Her thesis, "Sandinistas Go Global: Nicaragua and Western Europe, 1977-1990", was supervised by Dr Harmer and Professor Piers Ludlow. The Michael Dockrill Thesis Prize is awarded annually to the best doctoral thesis on any aspect and any period of International History.

Chile's Popular Unity Experiment at 50

Dr Harmer co-curated a special issue for Radical Americas, released in May and available open access. “Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50” sets out to reassess the meaning of the democratic socialist experience of Salvador Allende. Read the introduction that she co-wrote with Marian Schlotterbeck (UC Davis) and Joshua Frens-String (University of Texas, Austin). And have a look at the article she contributed, “Towards a Global History of the Unidad Popular”.

New book

Dr Harmer released a new co-edited volume Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left with Professor Alberto Martín Álvarez (Universitat de Girona). The volume showcases new research on the global reach of Latin American revolutionary movements during the height of the Cold War. Read more

2020

Historias podcast

Dr Tanya Harmer talked to the Historias Podcast about her latest book Beatriz Allende and revolutionary women in Latin America. Along with Tiffany Sippial, they discussed the significance of gender and the ways in which their subjects’ stories add to our collective understanding of politics and revolution during the mid-twentieth century.  Listen here

Interview for Jacobin Magazine

Dr Harmer was interviewed for Jacobin Magazine on “The Revolutionary Life of Salvador Allende’s Daughter Beatriz Allende” (11 September). Women revolutionaries are routinely obscured by history, but a new biography of Beatriz Allende – daughter and close confidante of Salvador Allende, an internationalist militant – helps shine a light on what it meant to be a woman revolutionary in the age of Che Guevara. Read the interview

New book

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America was released by UNC Press in March. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Beatriz and her generation drove political campaigns, university reform, public health programs, internationalist guerrilla insurgencies, and government strategies. Centering her life within the global contours of the Cold War era, Dr Harmer exposes the promises and paradoxes of the revolutionary wave that swept through Latin America in the long 1960s.

2019

New article

“The ‘Cuban Question’ and the Cold War in Latin America, 1959-1964” is the most recent publication by Dr Tanya Harmer. Pubished in the Journal of Cold War Studies (21:3), the article explains how Latin American governments responded to the Cuban revolution and how the “Cuban question” played out in the inter-American system in the first five years of Fidel Castro’s regime, from 1959 to 1964, when the Organization of American States imposed sanctions on the island.

2018

Episode of Historias podcast featuring Dr Tanya Harmer

In the inaugural state of the field episode, Dr Harmer was featured alongside Dr Renata Keller (University of Nevada) to discuss Latin America’s Cold War. In episode 28, released on 5 November, they consider the meaning of the Cold War in Latin America, questions of chronology and areas of scholarly emphasis, and their own work highlighting voices long overlooked in the historiography. The Historias podcast is hosted by the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies based in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina.

Virtual special issue on the Cold War in Latin America

Dr Harmer has organised a virtual special issue for the Journal of Latin American Studies (JLAS), entitled “The Cold War in Latin America" (open access). “This virtual special issue highlights some of the exciting directions that scholarship on the Cold War in Latin America has taken over the last decade”, Dr Harmer tells us in the Introduction. New interest in Latin America’s Cold War “have provided new insights into the way that the conflict affected – and was shaped by – Latin Americans’ international, transnational and global interactions as well as their domestic politics”. As a result, our understanding of the conflict has moved well beyond simplistic ideas of a distant bipolar superpower battle over the region. “The Cold War in Latin America” showcases some of the best new scholarship on the Cold War published by JLAS in previous years with articles on women, gender and morality; the “politicization and internationalization of everyday life”; and on interactions of Latin America’s revolutionary left.

Co-edited special journal issue published by Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe

Based on two international conferences co-convened by Dr Harmer - Global and Transnational Histories of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left and Intellectual Cultures of of Revolution in Latin America - Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe has published a co-edited special issue, titled "Revolutionary Transnationalism in Historical Perspective: Militant Networks in the Americas"  (vol. 28, no. 2). Both conferences were hosted by the Latin America-Europe Cold War Research Network in 2016. The Reseach Network is coordinated by Dr Harmer and sponsored by the LSE International History Department. The special issue features an introduction by Dr Harmer and by Dr Alberto Martin Alvarez (Instituto Mora). The whole issue is open access.

2017

LSE Excellence in Education Awards

Dr Tanya Harmer won a 2016-17 LSE Excellence in Education Award with other members of the department. Designed to support the School’s aspiration of creating ‘a culture where excellence in teaching is valued and rewarded on a level with excellence in research’ (LSE Strategy 2020), winners of the Excellence in Education Awards are recommended by LSE Heads of Department who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments.

Public talks in Chile

Dr Tanya Harmer spoke at two public events on the centenary of the 1917 revolutions in Santiago, Chile, in October On the 19th, she was at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile to take part in a public seminar, called "The Russian revolutions a hundred years on". She gave a talk on the historiography of the Cold War in Latin America. On 23-25 October, she attended a major international conference at the Nicanor Parra Library, entitled "The Bolshevik Revolution a hundred years on: the experience of 'real socialism' and the dilemmas of the contemporary world.” On the last day of the conference, she presented a paper on the legacy and impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on the Cold War in Latin America.

LSE Pro-Director Education Vision Fund awarded to Department's Pilot Project headed by Dr Tanya Harmer

In February 2017, the Department of International History was awarded funds from the LSE Pro-Director Education Vision Fund to support a pilot project called "Diversifying the Curriculum". Curricula in the Department of International History cover vast areas of the globe and range over more than six centuries. This pilot project, headed by Dr Tanya Harmer, the Department's Director of Teaching, will review five undergraduate courses in the department, with the aim of redesigning core topics, reading lists and teaching approaches to reflect the diversity of the discipline. The Pro-Director Education Vision Fund was established to support the delivery of the School’s Education Strategy and to allocate funds to projects designed to make a significant impact on students’ educational experiences. Following the submission of 13 proposals across LSE, the Department of International History was one of seven different academic departments and professional service units across LSE to be awarded funds. Learn more about the 2016-17 Pro-Director Education Vision Fund winners.

2016

BBC Two Newsnight

Dr Tanya Harmer contributed to a 5-minute piece on the life and legacy of Fidel Castro for BBC Two Newsnight on Monday, 28 November. Following the death of the Cuban leader on 25 November, BBC journalist Stephen Smith looked at the historical impact of the controversial Cuban revolutionary and leader.

Watch the interview (UK only)

2015

Student-led Teaching Excellence Award for Research Support and Guidance

Dr Tanya Harmer has won the Award for Research Support and Guidance at this year’s student-led Teaching Excellence Awards. The awards are run by the Students’ Union, supported by the Teaching and Learning Centre and sponsored by the Annual Fund. This year, competition was particularly hard, as students made 1362 nominations for 555 individual members of staff. This is a terrific achievement for Dr Tanya Harmer who last year had won the Major Review Award.

British Academy Newton Mobility Award

Dr Tanya Harmer has been awarded a British Academy Newton Mobility Award worth £9,962 to lead a collaborative research project with Dr Alberto Martín Álvarez at the Instituto Mora in Mexico City on "Transnational and Global Histories of Latin America's Revolutionary Left." The project will centre around two international conferences in 2016 on Latin American left-wing movements' transnational and global connections during the Cold War.

2014

Latin America and Europe during the Cold War

The LSE sponsored a symposium at 2014’s AHILA conference in Berlin on 10 September, coordinated by Dr Tanya Harmer. The symposium brought together 15 historians from around the world in 4 panels to examine the relations between Latin America, the Soviet bloc and Western Europe. The symposium focused on the formal relations between governments and political parties of Latin America and Europe. It aimed to investigate the transnational networks and contacts that emerged between both regions as a result of solidarity movements, youth groups, academic exchanges and travel. Read more about the symposium organised by Dr Tanya Harmer.

Book launch in Chile

Dr Tanya Harmer was in Santiago, Chile, on 28 July to launch her new book, co-edited with Alfredo Riquelme, Chile y la Guerra Fría Global. The book is the result of a conference Dr Harmer organised between LSE IDEAS and the Institute of History at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 2009. The event was featured in the national Chilean newspaper La Tercera. Read more about the book launch.

2013

Publications: Allende and 40th anniversary of the coup in Chile

Wednesday 11th September 2013 marked the 40th Anniversary of the coup in Chile against President Salvador Allende. Dr Tanya Harmer published work on Allende and Chile during his presidency. Her award-winning book is called Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (2012) published in Spanish.

2010

British Academy grant for "Brazil and the Cold War" project

Dr Tanya Harmer participated in the Latin America International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS and the Centre for Documentation and Research at the Fundaçao Getulio Vargas (CPDOC-FGV) after the award of a joint British Academy grant worth £20,000 to organise two international conferences in Rio de Janeiro and London.

Scheduled for September 2010 and April 2011, these conferences brought together academics from across Latin America and the UK to focus on Brazil's role in Latin America during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.