Jenny Pearce is Visiting Professor at the International Institute of Inequalities, LSE. She is a Political Scientist who uses anthropological and participatory research methods and considers herself an anthropologist of Peace. She was Professor of Latin American Politics in the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford 1992-2016; Research Professor in the Latin American and Caribbean Centre at the LSE 2016-2023, and she has been Visiting Professor at the University of Monterrey, Mexico and the Bolivariana University, Medellin, Colombia. In 2015 she was awarded the honour of “ Outstanding Latin Americanist” by the Internactional Conference of Americanists (ICA) and in 2023 she was awarded the Martin Diskin prize for Scholarship and Activism by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Her most recent monograph: ‘Politics without Violence? Towards a Post Weberian Enlightenment’ London: Palgrave Macmillan, was published in 2020.  

Research Interests

Her research interests include participatory politics, violence(s), human security, social change, state formation and elites. She founded and ran the International Centre for Participation Studies in the University of Bradford 2003-2014, focussing on South-North Learning, bringing Latin American participatory methods to researching problems of poverty and inequality in the north of England. In Latin America she has conducted fieldwork since 1975 in Uruguay, Central America, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Venezuela. She was Principal Investigator on the Newton/ESRC/Conacyt funded project: Co-Constructing Security Provision in Mexico: A Methodology and Action Plan from Communities to the State 2016-2018. She continues to work on issues of violence, security and peace in Latin America and is currently working on elites response to the Petro government in Colombia.