Anna Cant
Research Interest
Biography
Dr Anna Cant is a Latin American historian with expertise in twentieth-century politics, cultural history and rural development. She gained her PhD in History at the University of Cambridge (2015) with a thesis on land reform in Peru. Her first manuscript Land Without Masters: Agrarian Reform and Political Change Under Peru’s Military Government was published by University of Texas Press in 2021. Comparing three different regions of Peru, the book examines the cultural and political impact of the radical agrarian reform introduced by Juan Velasco Alvarado’s military government in 1969.
Before joining the LSE in September 2018, Dr Cant spent two years as a visiting researcher at Los Andes University, Bogota (Colombia), where her postdoctoral research focused on radio education in rural Colombia during the 1960s and 70s. The project examined in particular the ideas of rural modernity that were disseminated via the radio, and how these were received and contested in the countryside. Dr Cant is currently developing a new research project on the history of Catholic radio in the Andean region.
Dr Cant has taught in the UK and Colombia, and received scholarships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. She is one of the editors of Historia Agraria de América Latina and an associate member of the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos) at Cambridge University.
Publications
- Land without Masters Agrarian Reform and Political Change under Peru's Military Government. University of Texas Press, USA, 2021.
- ‘Radio Education in the Andes during the Second Half of the Twentieth Century’, Beezley, William H., (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford University Press, USA, 2021.
- ‘“Vivir Mejor”: Radio Education in Rural Colombia (1960–80)’, The Americas 44: 4, 573-600, 2020.
- ‘Agrarian Reform and “Development”’ in The Andean World. Eds. Kathleen Fine and Linda Seligmann. London: Routledge, October 2018.
- ‘Promoting the Revolution: SINAMOS in Three Different Regions of Peru’ in The Peculiar Revolution: Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment, 1968-1975. Eds. Carlos Aguirre and Paulo Drinot. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2017 / ‘Impulsando la revolución: Sinamos en tres regiones del Perú’ en La revolución peculiar: Repensando el gobierno militar de Velasco. Eds. Carlos Aguirre y Paulo Drinot. Lima, Peru: IEP, 2018.
- ‘Representando la Revolución: la propaganda política del gobierno de Juan Velasco Alvarado en el Perú, 1968-1975’ [Representing the Revolution: the political propaganda of the Juan Velasco Alvarado government in Peru, 1968-1975] in Imaginando América Latina. Ensayos de historia y cultura visual, siglos XIX y XX. Eds. Sven Schuster and Daniel Hernandez. Bogota: Universidad del Rosario, 2017.
- ‘“La singularidad de nuestro proceso”: Los significados políticos de la reforma agraria peruana’ [‘The singularity of our process’: the political meanings of the Peruvian agrarian reform] in Las luchas sociales por la tierra en América Latina: Un análisis histórico, comparativo y global. Eds. Hanne Cottyn et al. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Fondo Editorial, 2016.
- ‘“Land for Those Who Work It”: A Visual Analysis of Agrarian Reform Posters in Velasco’s Peru’, Journal of Latin American Studies 44, 1-37, 2012.
- Work in progress: Land Without Masters: Agrarian Reform and Political Change in Peru, 1968-75.
Teaching and Supervision
Dr Anna Cant teaches the following courses in the Department:
At undergraduate level:
HY113: From Empire to Independence: The Extra-European World in the Twentieth Century
HY120 Historical Approaches to the Modern World
HY334: Communication Revolutions in Latin America, c.1539 to the Present
At postgraduate level: