Professor Alvaro Mendez is the Director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a Senior Associate Fellow at LSE IDEAS.  He is a Full Research Professor at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, working on a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation that focuses on strategies for internationalization, innovation, and social responsibility. Publications related to this project can be found in this link.

Prof. Mendez is also an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and a Member of the Colombian Council of Foreign Affairs (CORI). He teaches at LSE, Sciences Po Paris, and Fudan University.  He has won numerous teaching awards such as the IR Departmental Teaching Prize in recognition of his teaching of International Relations at the LSE.

Prof. Mendez has contributed to numerous books as an author, co-author, or editor of numerous books including Colombian Agency and the Making of US Foreign Policy: Intervention by Invitation (Routledge, 2017); The China-Latin America Axis: Emerging Markets and their Role in an Increasingly Globalised World (Palgrave, 2018); New Development Assistance: Emerging Economies and the New Landscape of Development Assistance (Palgrave, 2020); The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations: The AIIB Membership (Palgrave, 2020); and China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics (Bloomsbury, 2023). Prof. Mendez has also published numerous peer-reviewed articles in such journals as Geopolitics, Global Policy, Asia Business & Management, Sustainability, Journal of Business Research, The China Journal, Asia Pacific Business Review, Finance Research Letters, Research in International Business and Finance, and Foreign Policy Analysis.