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Professor Ann Varley joined a ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº delegation to Mexico from 7th to 14th April to visit a number of top educational institutions.

Ann was already in Mexico, supported by a Santander Impact Award, visiting Dr Clara Salazar, of El Colegio de México, to prepare a joint paper and plan future research cooperation. Clara and Ann will present the results of their collaboration at a workshop on Law, Urban Space and Social Justice at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati, Spain, in June.

In addition to visiting several universities to promote research cooperation and staff and student mobility, the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº delegation held a reception for alumni on the 9th. April at the British Embassy.

This gave Ann the opportunity to renew links with two Mexican geographers who, like her, completed their PhDs at ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº in the early 1980s. Dr Guillermo Aguilar and Dr Alvaro Sánchez Crispín are both now in the Instituto de Geografía at the National Autonomous University (UNAM).

Guillermo’s daughter, Karin, also attended, having recently graduated from the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº MSc in Genetics of Human Disease, and José Eseverri, who completed the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Geography MSc in Environment, Science and Society a few years ago and now works for a community forestry NGO, Reforestamos México. Luciana Ludlow Paz was also there, who plans to begin postgraduate research in ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Geography under the supervision of Professor Peter Jones in 2015.

Before travelling to Mexico, Ann had been the guest of Professor Peter Ward at the University of Texas at Austin. On 19 March she had spoken at a workshop at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs on ‘Housing policies in Latin America: densification without displacement’.