The main question guiding the Working Group (WG) "Latin American Studies: National, Regional and Transnational Perspectives" can be formulated as follows: what has been the past, what is the present, and what could be the future of the field of Latin American Studies (LAS) in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) if regional and global contexts and their changes are considered, as well as the debates in the social sciences and humanities from the beginning of the 20th century to the present?

A preliminary review of university programs dedicated to Early Literature Studies reveals a marked interest in this subject area, evidenced by the inclusion of courses, areas, and periods geared toward the professional and postgraduate training of historians, literature specialists, and the full range of social sciences. Therefore, not only is their existence relevant, but also their functioning, as they contribute significantly to the training of professionals in these fields.

To critically situate the topic of study in the Latin American and Caribbean context, in a critical and contextual view of the Global South, we propose to analyze it from four axes.

1. The changes in the global and regional political context at the beginning of the 20th century, marked by the emergence of US hegemony in the Caribbean and Central America, are crucial. Subsequently, after World War II, this hegemony became globalized during the postwar period, within the framework of the Cold War, which is essential for understanding the diverse contexts through which Latin America has passed. The current post-Cold War period represents the latest of these scenarios, characterized by the struggle for this hegemony. At the global level, the reorganization of the academic field in the era of capitalist globalization has significantly impacted the reconfiguration of the humanities and social sciences, especially regarding funding, research agendas, and working conditions. In the regional context, the crises caused by the implementation of the neoliberal model and the resulting social, political, and intellectual struggles have fostered a renewed academic and political interest in understanding and reflecting on the national histories and problems of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, in dialogue with the regional and global contexts with which they interact. At the dawn of the 21st century, Latin America has gained relevance in international politics, driven by unprecedented regional integration initiatives since the beginning of the independence process in the 19th century. However, the new political landscape, marked by a "turn to the right" in the region, poses new challenges for analyzing the configuration of the relationships between knowledge and politics (Falero, Charles, Soler, 2016).

2. The need to create academic collaboration networks at the national, regional, and transnational levels among researchers to understand the past, present, and future of the agenda of problems and objects of study within the interdisciplinary field of knowledge that constitutes ELA (Economic and Social Studies). We still lack sufficient research that systematically analyzes the past and present of the ELA field in Latin American and Caribbean countries—that is, the changes, ruptures, and continuities in its objects of study, its questions, its methodologies, and its multiple temporalities and scales of analysis. From a long-term historical perspective, the development of the ELA field in Latin America and the Caribbean appears as a process of multiple intellectual operations that, since the 19th century, led first to the construction of the imagined community (Anderson, 1989) "Latin America" ​​(Feres Junior, 2004; Rouquié, 1998) and subsequently to the formation of a disciplinary community toward the mid-20th century. This process can be traced in the initiatives of Latin American and Caribbean intellectuals who constructed distinct genealogies of thought, based on interests, subjectivities, and memories situated within their own local histories (Mignolo, 2007), at national, regional, and transnational scales, always in dialogue with other regions of the world. In the early decades of the 20th century, faced with increasing US interference in Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America (Zinn, 2006; Gaztambide, 2003), these regional intellectual traditions adopted the pursuit of regional proximity and integration as a specific mission. In the next stage or generation, we find the formation of an academic community derived from this tradition specific to Latin American countries, viewed as an area of ​​study encompassing both the humanities and the social sciences. It is within this sphere of universities and research centers that the disciplinary community known as ELA will develop over the following decades, depending on the country, in the context of the Inter-American Cold War (Harmer, 2013), influenced by different factors, such as the formative role of Latin American exile by forcing the revision of ideas and concepts based on the experience of the diaspora (Roniger, 2009)

3. The need for a debate on the relationship between Area Studies and the evolution and changes in the paradigms that underpin the social sciences and humanities, and how these changes have impacted interdisciplinarity, the foundation of area studies in general. From this perspective, the historical conditions of the changing global, Latin American, and Caribbean context compel us to consider new scenarios and questions about Area Studies in the region. Therefore, it is urgent to begin systematizing studies that will help us understand the purpose of the interdisciplinary community in light of these changes in the historical expectations of the entire region, which affect how area studies, and specifically Area Studies, are currently constructed and articulated.

4. To understand the levels of institutionalization of Local Academic Entities (LAEs), their regional and international coordination, and their agendas. In recent decades, significant institutional development of LAEs has been observed in some Latin American and Caribbean countries, with key indicators being the quantitative and qualitative evolution of research lines, publications, and graduate programs. This was the result of an international movement of initiatives for the academic institutionalization of LAEs since the beginning of the 21st century. This is evident in the proliferation of research centers and institutes, thematic universities, undergraduate and graduate programs, publications, and academic conferences.

This proposal for the renewal of the Working Group aims to consolidate an academic network focused on coordinating a regional research plan. This plan will center on analyzing the past, present, and future of the field of Early-Stage Isolation (ESI) in Latin America and the Caribbean, integrating interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical studies.

The analysis will consider the multiple temporalities and geographical scales of the ELA determinations. It is projected that the results of this three-year work will contribute to the development of new national and regional research agendas, providing essential specialized knowledge for the design of relevant public policies, as evidenced in the previous collective publication of this Working Group (López Ávalos and Ayala, editors, forthcoming).

The work of this Working Group will facilitate the production, dissemination, and application of knowledge on the development of Local Action Groups (LAGs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), in conjunction with other CLACSO Working Groups and various Latin American, Caribbean, and global networks and institutions. This Working Group is composed of established and emerging researchers from Latin American and Caribbean countries and Europe.

The ELA (Ecological and Social Studies) can be defined as a field comprised of the set of social and humanistic disciplines that work interdisciplinarily in the study of specific problems of the region in its contemporary and present stage (Sosa Álvarez, 2007). In contrast to disciplinary fields that form dense communities of specialists, the ELA forms communities of specialists from diverse disciplines with a wide range of topics and problems, analytical approaches, and methodologies. Supported by a socio-historical perspective of the different countries and realities that make up the region, they propose to critically understand the history of the continent from their own perspective; to bring together different disciplines with convergent or similar themes and objects; and to bring together different social realities and national contexts on common problems (Novion, Oliver, Ayala, 2014).

The evolution of the Latin American Studies (LAS) disciplinary community in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) began within the context of the growing internationalization of the social sciences and humanities during the Cold War. This necessitates studying its national and regional developments from perspectives that address the process by considering its transnational and global interactions. In this sense, within the context of the expanded use of transnational perspectives in Latin American studies over the last two decades (Roniger and Ayala, 2025), it will be important to explore the dialogues and interactions among the different LAS developments within the context of the Global Cold War (Westad, 2018), while also taking into account the debates that have accompanied area and comparative studies since its end (Basedau and Köllner, 2007). The transnational perspective addresses the interconnectedness among individuals, groups, and nations, which is often triggered by social processes, political movements, ideas, and contacts that transcend state boundaries and national borders, thus shaping this dynamic. Such connectivity can develop from organizational ties, although it is often equally visible in cultural links, historical memories, cross-border networks and migratory flows (Roniger and Ayala, 2025: 7).

For these reasons, the research conducted within the Working Group will consider the global context in which Latin American Studies emerged as a field of study in the United States and Western Europe, as well as in countries of the socialist bloc. Currently, there are critical studies on how Latin American Studies developed in countries such as the United States (Chicote, 2018), Great Britain (Miller, 2018), Germany (Puhle, 2018), the Netherlands (Baud, 2018), the USSR (Bartley, 2018), and China (Xianglin and Huiye, 2018). These works agree that studies on Latin America and the Caribbean received a decisive boost during the Cold War. In academic institutions in the United States, Europe, and the socialist bloc, these programs were created by the political imperatives of the two contending superpowers, which had consequences for research agendas. In the United States and Europe, its beginnings as a field of study were strongly linked to the triad of universities, governments, and foundations, until the 1960s when a new generation of Latin Americanists was influenced by the political and social processes of Latin America (Chicote, 2018). In contrast, for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), we still lack systematic research on the origins and development of Latin American Economic Areas (LAA). However, we have seen uneven progress depending on the discipline and the country—for example, in Brazil (Beired, 2005), Mexico (Sosa Álvarez, 2007), Argentina (Águila 2011, 2012; Bohoslavsky, Geoghegan, and González, 2011; Ayala, 2018)—and efforts to articulate a comprehensive regional vision—for example, Aricó, 1980; Acosta, Ansaldi, Giordano, and Soler, 2015. Colloquium on Latin American Studies in the 21st Century, 2018; Altamirano, 2021; Roniger and Ayala, 2025; López Ávalos and Ayala, editors, in press?, which will constitute the basis of discussion of the lines of work of the GT.

In dialogue with these studies, our interest as a Working Group will be to analyze the dialectical development dynamics of Local Autonomous Communities (LACs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), considering, on the one hand, national and regional developments that can offer alternative perspectives, and, on the other hand, perspectives constructed (and often imposed) from global centers, whose agendas generally do not align with those of LAC countries. All of this takes place within an international academic context that places Latin American social sciences and humanities before the challenge of transnational and global shifts in the modes of historical analysis and interpretation.

Bearing in mind the context, the debates and the gaps in knowledge and academic articulation mentioned above, this Working Group proposes to focus its three-year plan on two lines of work in relation to the field of knowledge of Latin American Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean:

1. Study and analysis of the emergence and development of Latin American and Caribbean States (LAS) in Latin America and the Caribbean. From a socio-historical perspective, this line of research will focus on the historical comparison of the idea of ​​Latin America from the last third of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, with the intention of highlighting the historical processes that led to the construction of the imagined community of "Latin America" ​​from the perspectives of different countries and regions. This will be done through the lens of the agency of intellectuals, travelers, exiles, and migrants, with special attention to women, as well as groups and institutions. Its findings will provide a transnational interpretation of the diverse scales and circulations of knowledge production about Latin America and the Caribbean as units of analysis.

2. Theory and methodology in ELA. This axis proposes to analyze the field of ELA from a methodological approach centered on five issues: a) socio-historical perspectives of analysis; b) interdisciplinary work ranging from the classic history of ideas to the new intellectual history, including studies of the Cold War, exiles, journals, biographical studies, among others; c) comparative analyses; d) transnational and global scales of analysis; and e) the search for the production of critical knowledge on problems of the macro-region that contribute to transforming its realities.

Based on its core principles, the Working Group will foster exchange among specialists in Latin American and Caribbean Early-Stage Emergencies (LASE) through in-person and virtual meetings. These forums will allow for discussions on research advances and the development of a shared understanding of LAE from national, regional, and transnational perspectives, promoting human resource development through dialogue between established and emerging researchers. The aim is to advance the consolidation and expansion of an interdisciplinary academic collaboration network that operates internationally based on three lines of action: a) developing and implementing a systematic, regional, comparative, and transnational research project on LAE; b) increasing inter-institutional cooperation and coordination among its various nodes in the areas of research, teaching (undergraduate and graduate), outreach, knowledge transfer, publications, professional training, and public policy advice; and c) seeking greater coordination and exchange with other CLACSO Working Groups.

In addition, the keynote lectures of the Working Group's Permanent Seminar on Latin American Studies will continue (2023-2025), the publication of two collective works will be managed; a postgraduate seminar on the Working Group's theme will be designed for delivery in different postgraduate programs, and a proposal for a Virtual Diploma for CLACSO's educational offerings, taught by Working Group members, will be formulated.