Rafael R. Ioris

I am a Professor of Latin American History and Politics and an Affiliated Faculty at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. I am also a Research Fellow at the Washington Brazil Office, at the Institute of Studies of the United States in Brazil, at the Cold War Study Group, and at the Research Committee of the National Truth Commission at the Institute of International Studies at the University of São Paulo.

I have authored several articles, books, and book chapters on the history of development in Brazil and other parts of Latin America and on the course of US-Latin American relations, particularly during the Cold War. My publications include: Qual Desenvolvimento? Os Debates, Sentidos e Lições da Era Desenvolvimentista. (Paco Editorial, 2017), Transforming Brazil: A History of National Development in the Postwar Era (Routledge, 2014), and Culturas em Choque: a Globalização e os Desafios para a Convivência Multicultural. (Annablume, 2007). I have also co-authored and co-edited Frontiers of Development in the Amazon: Riches, Risks, and Resistances. (Lexington Book, 2020) and Amazonia no Seculo XXI: Trajetorias, Dilemas e Perspectivas (Alameda, 2022), and I am a regular contributor on multiple media outlets in Brazil and the United States on topics on US-Latin American/Brazilian relations, Brazilian foreign policy, and US politics.

My research agenda speaks to a larger intellectual agenda dealing with the dissemination of industrial projects in late-developing societies. I am presently working on the history of US-based developmental ideologies and multilateral developmental programs implemented in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. Closely associated with my research interests, my pedagogical philosophy seeks to answer some of the big questions involved in the broad patterns of development undergone by late-coming societies.

My teaching experiences span into different fields and settings and I have taught both in Brazil, the United States, France and China. The list of courses I regularly teach includes colonial and modern Latin American survey history courses, an introduction to Latin American studies through movies, a comparative history of Latin American development, the Making of Modern Brazil, Cities in Latin America, and U.S-Latin American relations. I also regularly teach a graduate course with a colleague at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies on the Global Emergence of Brazil as study-abroad summer course in Rio de Janeiro.

I have been the recipient of various prestigious research funds, such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the French Foreign Ministry, the National Research Council of Brazil, the Research Foundation of the state of Sao Paulo, the UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Rockefeller Archive Center. I have presented my work in various important universities across the world, such as Brown University, Stanford University, University of Cardiff, El Colegio de Mexico, Universidad de Los Andes, the University of Paris, the University of Bordeaux, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Fluminense Federal University (UFF), the University of Brasilia (UnB).

I was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of International Relations (IRI) at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in 2017. I have also been an Invited Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program of the Institute d'Hautes Etudes en Amerique Latine at the Sorbonne University, in Paris, in 2022; as well as at the Graduate Program in International Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, in Beijing, in 2023, and at the Graduate Program on Law and Politics at the University of Bordeaux, in 2024.