Professor Jens R Hentschke
Professor of Latin American History and Politics, Habil., FRHistS - Deputy Head of School and Degree Programme Director for Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies

Background

Dpl., Dr. phil., Habilitation, FRHistS

Jens R Hentschke was born in Germany but has lived in the United Kingdom for circa 17 years.

He has repeatedly attracted long-term funding for his research and worked, for longer periods, at universities and in archives and libraries in Latin America, the U.S., and Eastern and Western Europe.

From 1996 to 2004, he was an External Senior Lecturer (Privatdozent) in Political Science at Heidelberg University where he obtained his Habilitation.

Roles and Responsibilities

1. Deputy Head of School

2. Degree Programme Director for Single Honours Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (RT47)

3. Departmental Co-ordinator for Portuguese

4. Personal Development and Research (PDR) Reviewer

5. Liaison with the School of Historical Studies (BoS)

Qualifications

1. Diploma (eq.5-year MA degree) in LA Studies/History ('Distinction')
2. Dr. phil. in Latin American History ('summa cum laude')
3. Habilitation (eq. Livre-Docência/Doctorat d'Etat) in Pol. Science

Memberships

1. Latin American Studies Association, U.S.A.
2. Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos
3. Society for Latin American Studies, U.K.
4. American Historical Association, U.S.A.
5. Conference on Latin American History, U.S.A.
6. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutsche Lateinamerika-Forschung, Germany
7. Deutscher Hochschulverband, Germany

Within the university/region:
-Member of the Research Group "The Americas".

Honours and Awards

Election to a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society in 1998

Languages

German (native language), English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Basic reading skills in Russian (once high-level proficiency) and French (3rd language in school).

Research Interests

1. History and Politics of Latin America, especially Brazil and River Plate, from the late 18th to the 20th cc.

2. History of Ideas in Latin America and beyond, especially the impact of liberalism, positivism, and (neo-)populism on state and nation-building.

3. History of Education in Latin America/social policy analysis

Apart from the books and articles listed on this webpage, Professor Hentschke has published more than 30 book reviews, several printed conference reports, some longer interviews with Brazilian broadsheet papers (in part reprinted on the internet), many journalistic articles, and research reports for DFG and AHRB.

Current Work

Jens R Hentschke has started research for a new project on frontier modernization in late 19th/early 20th cc. Latin America. A pilot will look into the normative ideas (liberalism, positivism, and Krausism) that shaped the transformation of Uruguay into the hemisphere's first welfare state democracy. Education was key in the (re-)construction of the nation which started with the 'Reforma Vareliana' in the 1870s. What gives this project a pioneering character is its attempt at placing Uruguay into the context of the greater River Plate.

Future Research

Professor Hentschke's monograph 'Reconstructing the Brazilian Nation: Public Schooling in the Vargas Era' combines macro- and micro-history and explores how regional politics, especially Rio Grande do Sul's polity, influenced Brazil's social transformation after 1930. This study offers a solid basis for an extension of Hentschke's research into the thriving area of borderland studies. From 2008, starting with the current pilot study, he wants to take the exploration of state- and nation-building further and focus on other supra- and sub-national frontier region of Latin America. The research questions that will drive this project are how these frontiers acted as cross-roads and laboratories of competing ideas about economic modernisation, state formation, and nation-building; in what way military and civilian institutions assimilated and contested them, thereby producing alternative generations of leaders; and under what conditions frontier modernization gained national relevance.

Research Roles

1. Member of the University's 'Brazil and Lusophone Countries Group'

2. School Representative on the Faculty's advisory group to the Dean of Research

3. Representative for Iberian Studies on the Dean of Postgradute Studies's Block Grant 2 Committee 

4. Member of the Newcastle Santander Selection Committee

5. Field of Studies Leader for History, Politics, and Society

6. Chair of Postgraduate Review Panels

7. Research Mentor

Postgraduate Supervision

Co-supervisor of Steven Robinson, Ph.D in Politics ("The Europeanisation of Portuguese Foreign Policy") and Selina Patel (prov.: on concubinage and marriage in late eighteenth-century Brazil)

Jens R Hentschke is willing to supervise Masters and Ph.D. theses on
1. Latin American, especially Brazilian and Cono Sur, history and politics
2. the history of ideas in Latin America, in a comparative perspective
3. the history of education
4. inter-American relations
A good reading knowledge of Portuguese and Spanish is essential but can be acquired while at university.

Esteem Indicators

Professor Hentschke has been an elected member of the Committee of the British Society for Latin American Studies for six years. He is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of the Americas at University College London; belongs to the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College and the International Review Board of the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT); served on the AHRC Fellowship panel and the international panel reviewing the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education's 40 million Euro programme to promote Area Studies; acted as a peer reviewer for the Economic and Social Research Council and The Leverhulme Trust; was an assessor of professorial candidates; and has been a reader of manuscripts for publishers and journals. Professor Hentschke is a member of the Editorial Council of "Anos 90" at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre and the Scientific Committee of 'Arquivo da Historia de Educação' at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, both Brazil. He has been invited to present papers at international conferences, expert symposia, and round tables in Brazil, Germany, and the U.S. and has been repeatedly interviewed on historical and political events in Latin America by leading Brazilian broadsheet papers, BBC History, and Reuters. His publications are recommended for further reading in encyclopedia ('Lexikon der Politik', Beck/'Diccionario de Ciencia Política', Porruas Mexico), constitute required course literature at European and North American universities, and some have been translated into Portuguese.

Funding

(only listing of large and research-related grants)
1. Volkswagen Foundation Area Studies Fellowship for research at St Antony's College, Oxford, 1993-5, all incl. ca. £ 30,000

2. Research Grant of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, for field work in Germany, Britain, Brazil, and the U.S., 1996-8, ca. DM 100,000

3. Arts and Humanities Research Board Leave Award, 2001, cov. 4 months of annual salary                                

4. Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship, 2011-12, cov. 9 months of annual salary

Undergraduate Teaching

SPA1019 Introduction to the History, Culture, and Society of the Iberian Peninsula (Comparative History and Politics of Spain and Portugal in first semester)

LAS2026 Comparative History of Latin America I: From the Independencia to the End of Slavery (1789/1810-1888)
(part II, subtitled 'From the Birth of Panamericanism to the End of the Cold War', is currently dormant)

LAS4001 Inter-American Relations since the Spanish-American War (1898)

POR4002 Extended Study: Cultures of the Lusophone World

SML4099 Dissertation in Spanish/Portuguese/Latin American Studies (History and Politics topics)

Postgraduate Teaching

Dr Hentschke teaches on the MA courses in 'History of the Americas' and 'Latin American Interdisciplinary Studies' (MALAIS):

LAS8003 'Intellectual and Political Thought in Brazil (and Spanish America) since Independendence'

and various other contributions to courses, especially SOC8101 The Shaping of Latin America I: Social and Political Themes', on the MALAIS degree.


In the past he taught seven cohorts of MA students at Heidelberg University as well as on Newcastle's MAs in 'The Americas' (LAS802 U.S. World Policy and Inter-American Relations) and 'History of the Americas'. He also supervised a Portuguese Level E translation project on the MA in ML.