On February 25, 2022, the EU-LAC Foundation, together with the GIGA Institute for Latin American Studies and the Ibero-American Institute Berlin, organized a virtual preparatory session in view of the meeting of Think Tanks, Research Centres and Study Associations that will take place in Berlin on April 28-29, 2022. The meeting will enable the exchange and discussion between the main European centres of Latin American studies on the current state of Latin Americanist research in Europe, the development of synergies between the invited institutions, and cooperation to increase the visibility of the LAC region in the agendas of European countries.
The meeting was moderated by Peter Birle, researcher at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. Adrián Bonilla, Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation, gave a welcoming speech emphasizing the importance of cooperation between the entities invited to the event, especially during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting to be held in April has the function of facilitating complementarities in the lines of research of the attending entities to advance scientific thinking. The EU-LAC Foundation, in its mandate to generate dialogues on the relevance and potential of the bi-regional relationship including civil society and academic entities, considers the current moment very opportune for the organization of the meeting in Berlin.
During the virtual meeting, the main topic of discussion was the agenda proposed by the three organising entities for the April meeting. Based on this, the invited participants provided input on the structure and order of the agenda, as well as on the topics to be discussed and the manner in which the interventions will be developed. Based on these comments, the proposed agenda will be modified to give priority to dialogue among the invited entities.
The participants of the preparatory meeting on February 25 were: Anna Ayuso of CIDOB, Barcelona; Barbara Hogenboom of CEDLA, Amsterdam; José Antonio Sanahuja of Fundación Carolina, Madrid; Claudia Zilla of SWP, Berlin; Merike Blofield of GIGA, Hamburg; Carlos Quenan of Institut des Amériques, Paris; Francisco Sánchez of Instituto de Iberoamérica, Salamanca; Bartłomiej Znojek of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Warsaw; Francesco M. Chiodi, representing Antonella Cavallari of IILA, Rome; Carlos Malamud of the Real Instituto Elcano, Madrid; Sérgio Costa of the Institute for Latin American Studies, Berlin.
