Editorial: JLAG's Expanded Editorial Team

The Journal of Latin American Geography is happy to announce a newly expanded editorial team, including the addition of three new Associate Editors and a new Book Review Editor.

Jessica Budds joins the JLAG editorial team as an Associate Editor. Jessica is an Associate Professor in Geography and International Development at the University of East Anglia. She has an interdisciplinary background in Hispanic studies, Latin American studies and human geography. Her work explores the relationship between economic development, water governance, and the lives, livelihoods, and landscapes of low-income groups from a political ecology perspective. She has researched the implications of both neoliberal approaches to water management (water privatization, water markets, payments for ecosystem services), and the development of major resource-based industries (agribusiness, mining, hydropower), showing that the ways in which they construct and produce water consolidates economic and political power.

Eugenio Arima also joins the JLAG editorial team as an Associate Editor. Eugenio is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas, Austin. His research lies in the intersection of land change science, spatial analysis, and landscape ecology. Broadly, he is a human-environmental geographer interested in understanding the motivations that drive humans to act upon and transform tropical landscapes and how that manifests spatially in terms of patterns. This link between human agency and landscape pattern is based on conceptual and theoretical approaches derived from behavioral theory and political economy. His work typically employs mixed-methods such as interview-based fieldwork, computer simulation, econometrics and spatial statistics, geographic information systems, and remote sensing.

Diana Tung joins the JLAG editorial team as an Associate Editor for Visual Content. Diana is currently a freelance graphic designer and a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the Australian National University. Her dissertation project examines the commercialization of the aguaje palm fruit (Mauritia flexuosa) in Iquitos, Peru, where she is currently based. As a graphic designer she has worked primarily on projects promoting the public interest. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a MA in Applied Anthropology from the ANU. As the inaugural Associate Editor for Visual Content, Diana is excited to further interdisciplinary scholarship in Latin American geography through art and design.

Finally, Alan Marcus will join the JLAG editorial team as its new Book Review Editor, effective January 2021. Alan is professor and graduate director at the Geography and Environmental Planning Department at Towson University, Maryland. The main focuses of his research include immigration, race, sense of place, and the geography of music, and he is a regional specialist on Brazil. His new book, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press, focuses on U.S. Confederates who migrated to Brazil. Alan will be taking over this role from Eric Carter, who has ably served as JLAG's Book Review Editor since 2015.

This newly expanded editorial team will further enable us to recruit, review, edit, and ultimately publish cutting-edge geographical scholarship on and from Latin America.