PhD Latin American History

Outgoing 2016

to Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Research Area:
Natural and Cultural Heritage as New Commons

Research Project:
National identities, transnational dynamics and processes of heritage designation in the Southern Cone

My name is Maximiliano von Thüngen and I am a doctoral student at the Department of Iberian and Latin American History at the University of Cologne.

My doctoral thesis analyzes the relationship between “historical sites” and the development of memories and identities of the inhabitants from villages where these historical sites are located.

I did fieldwork in libraries and archives in Buenos Aires and ethnographical fieldwork in different rural villages in Paraguay, where the ruins of the Jesuit missions from the 17th and 18th centuries are located. I mainly conducted interviews with the inhabitants of those villages, in order to understand the significance that the ruins have for them.

I am extremely grateful for the possibility of doing a research trip to Argentina and Paraguay thanks to a scholarship funded by the thematic network “Remapping the Global South”.