Guadarrama, Andrei

Field: Latin America; Advisor: Piccato; Year: 2017

Andrei Guadarrama is a P.h.D. candidate in history at Columbia University. He is interested in the political economy of urban infrastructure and the reproduction of inequality in modern cities. His dissertation, “Circuits of Power: Urban Entrepreneurs, Transportation, and Housing in Mexico City, 1880-1950” examines how urban entrepreneurs exercised their economic and political power to build tramways and roads that would create opportunities for property development, becoming central albeit neglected factors in the model of national modernization that prioritized an urban economy over a countryside deprived of resources. The Social Science Research Council funded his research through the International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2021-2022).

As a public humanities scholar, Andrei is committed to speaking with communities outside academia and thinking historically about the present. He is currently curating “Mobilities and the City,” a digital exhibition that traces Mexico City’s social and cultural histories of transportation and urban life from the early twentieth century to the present.

Education

Andrei graduated with a B.A. in Latin American Studies (Honorific Mention, 2015) and an M.A. in History (Honorific Mention, 2017) from the National Autonomous University of
Mexico.

Experience

As a Teaching Scholar at Columbia, Andrei will teach the course “Mobilities in the Americas: An Urban and Public History” (2023). Andrei has taught for classes on Colonial and Modern Latin America, Ancient Egypt, and the social history of sports in the Americas.

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