Research
Gods, Spirits and People: The Transmission of Religious Ideas and Practice in the Early Modern Hispanic World.
Andrew's first book, Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750, came out of his PhD investigation into the interaction between demons and the population of Colonial Peru. It centred on the diverse ways in which the perceived presence of demons was experienced and utilised by members of the various cultures that coexisted and intermingled in the Viceroyalty.
Currently Andrew is completing a project that investigates the presence of angels and demons in the Early Modern Hispanic World, with a particular focus on the viceroyalties of New Spain (modern Mexico), Peru (including modern Bolivia and Chile) and New Granada (modern Colombia and Venezuela), but also including Spain and Southern Italy. Based on archival materials, theological treatises and religious art, the project assesses the various ways in which these spiritual beings were perceived to affect human lives. A co-edited anthology of essays on this topic was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.
Andrew has also worked on slavery and African witchcraft in Colonial New Granada, and conscience on Early Modern Hispanic frontiers. These studies incorporate a much broader interest in global Jesuit missions and, more generally, the transmission of religious ideas and practice in the early modern period throughout the Hispanic World, as well as the conflicts and surprising accommodations that resulted.
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Sub-project: Martyrdom in the Hispanic World
As a result of the work he has done on missions and missionaries, Andrew began to research more closely the theme of martyrdom in the Hispanic World, linking the Colonial period with the modern or even contemporary periods in order to contribute to understanding martyrdom in a global context across time. For an interview in Spanish on these ideas as they were emerging with the Sinaloan newspaper El Debate click on the following link El Debate-Interview.
This work has resulted in a number of publications including an open access, bilingual, critical edition of Antonio de la Calancha's 1638 account of the martyrdom of the Augustinian friar Diego Ortiz, in Vilcabamba, Peru (1571). The Collapse of Time: The Martyrdom of Diego Ortiz (1571)
His interest in religious martyrdom has also generated a related interest in the significant overlap between religious and political ideologies and their impact perhaps best encapsulated by the growth and subsequent demise (or transformation) of Liberation Theology in the latter half of the twentieth century in the context of the political upheavals and brutal repression experienced by the populations of Latin America.
Music for Hope: A Documentary History of Non-Violent, Musical Counterculture in the Bajo-Lempa, El Salvador 1970-2020
His most recent project links to the aftermath of the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992) as he has begun create a documentary history of Music for Hope, a Salvadoran youth organisation that teaches music to young people as part of the development of a counter-culture to that of the extreme violence that is so pervasive throughout the region. Working together with the participants and practitioners of the project past and present, Andrew is using oral history to chart the previous 20 years of the project since its foundation shortly after the end of the civil war (1980-92) and its subsequent development over the next five: the documentary essentially follows the work within the project of the music teachers and the students and places it in its historical context (prior to the civil war). It's their story as they live it, recount it and record it. See Music for Hope: A Documentary History - work in progress for more information and video-clips of the research in progress. See also the organisation website: Music for Hope.
Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu): interdisciplinary approaches to understanding a complex medical phenomenon
This is a collaborative, interdisciplinary pilot project begun January 2018 bringing together epidemiologists, nephrologists and social anthropologists from Mexico (Guadalajara) with historians and medical anthropologists from the University of Liverpool goal to design a protocol for the investigation of CKDu which has reached epidemic levels in Mexico and Central America. The pilot study is based on the study of three communities around Lake Chalapa (near Guadalajara) currently suffering from this chronic disease. As well as contributing to the co-authored protocol, Andrew's role as a social historian is to document the Oral History of the sufferers and their families to contextualise the changes that have taken place in their communities with respect to the disease (labour, land and water usage, nutrition, environment, agricultural practices etc). The intention is to expand the scope of this project, working with La Isla Network (Nicaragua) in order to better understand the phenomenon and (much longer term) contribute to possible solutions and interventions.
Research grants
Memories of Resistance: A Digital Archive of Chile’s Graphic Resistance
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (USA)
October 2023 - September 2025
AHRC IAA 22-25
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
April 2022 - January 2026
Memories of Cultural Resistance: A Digital Archive of Chile’s Graphic Resistance to Dictatorship
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (USA)
January 2021 - August 2023
Waterbodies (Cuerpos de Agua): public understandings of the socio-environmental aetiologies of unexplained kidney disease.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
December 2017 - December 2023
Research collaborations
Dr Ciara Kierans, Prof. Georgina Enfield, Dr César Padilla, Dr Guillermo Lozana, Dr Felipe Garcia, Dr Magdalena Villareal
2) Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu): interdisciplinary approaches to understanding a complex medical phenomenon
Hospital Civil (Guadalajara), Universidad de Guadalajara, CIESAS
This is a collaborative, interdisciplinary pilot project begun January 2018 bringing together epidemiologists, nephrologists and social anthropologists from Mexico (Guadalajara) with historians and medical anthropologists from the University of Liverpool goal to design a protocol for the investigation of CKDu which has reached epidemic levels in Mexico and Central America. The pilot study is based on the study of three communities around Lake Chalapa (near Guadalajara) currently suffering from this chronic disease. As well as contributing to the co-authored protocol, my role as a social historian is to document the Oral History of the sufferers and their families to contextualise the changes that have taken place in their communities with respect to the disease (labour, land and water usage, nutrition, environment, agricultural practices etc). The intention is to expand the scope of this study introducing a comparative element with a similar documented phenomenon in Nicaragua collaborating with La Isla Network (https://laislanetwork.org/) and UNAN, León (Nicaragua).