Danilo Antonio Contreras
2019-2020 ALARI Fellow
Danilo Antonio Contreras M. is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College, where he teaches courses on comparative politics, politics in Latin America, Latin American studies, and democracy consolidation. Broadly, he researches how Afro-Latin Americans and their descendants make use of local institutions and understandings of ethno-racial identities to strategize against structural inequalities and discrimination.
He is currently completing his first book project, Ethno-Nationalism Without Ethno-Racial Politics in the Dominican Republic. The book develops an argument for why ethno-nationalism, not ethno-racial identity, tends to motivate electoral politics in the DR. He uses an original field experiment, as well as qualitative and survey research to support his argument. Research from this project has been published in the Latin American Research Review, and it has been supported, most recently, by fellowships at Williams College, the College of the Holy Cross, and ALARI, where was a fellow in 2019 – 2020.
He is currently vice-president of the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS).