LACS Staff

LACS Staff

LACS is a small department, boasting only 4 regular staff.   Notwithstanding that, LACS has been up and functioning very successfully since 1984, and in 2006, became recognized by the Department of Education as one of about 20 other NRC (National Resource Centers) in the United States.  Our very efficient staff cover everything from student services to outreach and event management.  

Richard Turits: Director  

Professor Turits became the new LACS director this past September, 2007.  He is a historian of the Caribbean and Latin America, particularly the Hispanic Caribbean and Haiti, and is fluent in both Spanish and Haitian Creole.  A graduate of Brown University, he received an M.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1997). He was an assistant professor at Princeton University from 1997 to 2003, when he joined the University of Michigan faculty as Associate Professor of History and Afroamerican and African Studies.  His research interests focus on histories of race, slavery, violence, peasantries, and nondemocratic regimes. 

Professor Turit's publications include Foundations of Despotism:  Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford Univ. Press, 2003), which won the John Edwin Fagg Prize of the American Historical Association and the Bolton-Johnson Prize of the Conference on Latin American History.  His publications also include 'A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed:  The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic,' Hispanic American Historical Review (Aug. 2002), winner of the James Alexander Robertson Memorial Prize of the Conference on Latin American History.  Professor Turits's current projects include a general history of the Caribbean with Laurent Dubois to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.  He is also writing a book on the history of racial meanings in colonial Santo Domingo and the Dominican Republic in the national period within a broad comparative perspective. 

David Frye: Program Associate/Student Advisor

David works with the administration of the program and is always ready and willing to guide students on their path through LACS.  He joined LACS in 1996, holding a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Princeton University. David is fluent in Spanish and has published a book of ethnography, 'Indians into Mexicans', several articles, and 10 book translations. He coordinates the LACS thesis seminar, and as a Lecturer II in Anthropology he teaches introductory courses on the society and culture of Mexico.

Elizabeth de Avelar Solano Martins: Programming & Outreach

'Bebete', as she prefers to be called, has been with LACS since Fall of 2000, and is a Brazilian native with graduate training in communication studies and 20 years of experience in arts administration and cultural events production in the US and Brazil. Prior to joining the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program as Program Associate, she worked as an arts administrator in one of Rio de Janeiro's most important cultural centers, and was one of two partners in a private cultural events production firm. Bebete is a native Portuguese speaker, and and has learned some Spanish in the time she has been here.

Mercedes Santos-Garay: Administrative Assistant

Mercedes joined us in February 2004, after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Communication Studies. She is originally from El Salvador, but spent most of her childhood and teenage years in Belize. Mercedes has been with the University since 2001, working in research and data management. She also speaks Portuguese, and provides support to our faculty and students, and helps with event and outreach management, and financial matters.