The Cuban Research Institute will serve as the institutional host for Dr. Marie Laure Geoffray, a Fulbright Scholar from France, between April and July 2021. During her stay in Miami, Dr. Geoffray will conduct research for her book project entitled "The Transnationalization of the Cuban Cause, 1989–2019." The project focuses on the development of transnational ties between the Cuban-American community and former Central European dissidents, as well as Latin American and European democracy and human rights activists.
The "Cuban cause," that is, the Cuban diaspora's struggle for democracy and human rights in Cuba, has been thoroughly documented in the scholarly literature as the Cuban diaspora is one of the most organized and influential ones in the United States. Unfortunately, few studies have developed an interest in the transnational dimension of the Cuban cause, beyond the U.S.-Cuba relationship. However, the promoters of the Cuban cause have been part of a broader transnational network of anticommunist activists, think tanks, NGOs, and congressmen, whose objectives encompass the building of an anticommunist memory of communism, a struggle to achieve justice for past and present wrongs, and the promotion of an anticommunist Schumpeterian vision of democracy in international fora.
The ambition of Dr. Geoffray's project is to map these networks, understand their ideational roadmap, and assess their regional and international influence as far as democracy and human rights activism. Her research relies on archival work, network tracing and network analysis, the building of an extensive database of press articles, and fieldwork, which entails the observation of events (conferences, talks, screenings), participation in formal and informal discussions, and recorded semi-structured interviews.
Dr. Marie Laure Geoffray is an adjunct professor in political science at the Paris Institute for Latin American Studies of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University. She is the author of the book Contester à Cuba (Contestation in Cuba, 2012) and numerous articles in academic journals and book chapters. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Sciences Po Paris University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Free University of Berlin.
