Campus:

IU Bloomington

Timo Schaefer works on the social history of transnational ideas – such as liberalism, democracy, or human rights – in modern Mexico. His Ph.D. dissertation won both institutional and international prizes, and his book Liberalism as Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Legal Rule in Post-Colonial Mexico, 1820-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) was awarded the Best Social-Science Book Prize from the Mexico Section as well as an Honorable Mention in the Best-Book Competition from the Nineteenth-Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association. Among his current research projects are the life history of an indigenous political activist who played an important role in late-twentieth century Mexican social movements, and a general history of Latin America that explores how the region came to be associated with a radical utopian politics. He has held teaching and research positions at the University of British Columbia, University of New Brunswick, Brandeis University, Boston University, and Royal Roads University, and is currently a fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) at the Universidad de Guadalajara.