Santiago Center will Host Four Scholars-in-Residence in 2025
Their work spans pressing challenges in climate change, public health, transportation policy, and environmental governance.
In late 2024, Columbia Global launched its inaugural Scholars-in-Residence program, selecting 12 Columbia faculty members and researchers for immersive residencies at five Global Centers worldwide—Beijing, Mumbai, Nairobi, Rio, and Santiago. Each scholar will spend two to eight weeks at a Center, deepening their research, teaching, and professional ties within the local academic and cultural landscape.
Throughout 2025, the Santiago Center will host four of these scholars, whose work spans pressing challenges in climate change, public health, transportation policy, and environmental governance.
Joerg Schaefer (March–April 2025)
Research focus: The Santiago Water Crisis
Joerg Schaefer, Lamont Research Professor and founding director of the Lamont Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory, will use his residency to address one of Santiago’s most urgent challenges: water scarcity. With over a decade of collaboration with Chilean glaciologists Esteban Sagredo (Universidad Católica) and Rodrigo Soteres (Universidad de Magallanes), Schaefer will deepen his research into how climate change and glacier retreat affect water security in Andean megacities such as Quito, Lima, Bogotá, and Santiago. He plans to organize public lectures, policy workshops, and a conference focused on water sustainability in Santiago entitled “Climate and Ice: From the Rising Seas to the Mountain Water Crisis.”
Schaefer’s residency will also support the advancement of the Patagonian Icefields Research Program in partnership with Universidad Católica and Universidad de Magallanes, offering new fieldwork opportunities for Columbia students.
“The future of these megacities literally dries up in our warming world, and the current scientific understanding of past, modern, and future ice melt—and thus dry-season water supply—remains under-constrained. It is our duty as scientists, educators, and citizens to invest more effort into improving the understanding and robustness of predictions for ice and snow melt, and the resulting water availability.” – Joerg Schaefer
Ariana Salas‑Castillo (April 2025)
Research focus: Public vs. Private Transportation Policies and Their Climate & Social Impacts in Santiago
Ariana Salas-Castillo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Columbia Climate School, investigates the political economy of urban mobility in Latin America. Santiago has become a regional reference point for its innovation and investments in public transportation: it boasts one of the world’s largest electric bus fleets, has made advances in gender-inclusive transport policy by training female bus drivers and addressing harassment, and is expanding bus routes through participatory cartography in underserved boroughs. Yet these efforts have not produced expected reductions in emissions or increases in ridership.
During her residency, Salas-Castillo will conduct interviews with public officials and analyze transport policy outcomes in Santiago and Bogotá to identify the institutional and political factors behind this gap.
Her collaboration with Universidad de Chile, Universidad Católica, and the Metropolitan Directorate of Public Transportation will contribute to a comparative paper to be presented at the Governance and Local Development Institute in April 2025.
“Why is public bus transportation in Santiago not serving its climate and social purposes despite all the progress made? This project, which builds on my dissertation research on public bus transportation reforms in Latin America—with a focus on Santiago—aims to answer this question by examining the public and private policies implemented over the last decade.” – Ariana Salas-Castillo
Daniel Giovenco (July 2025)
Research focus: Advancing Global Tobacco Control Policy: A Comparative Study of Chile and the United States
Daniel Giovenco, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, will study how national tobacco control strategies shape health disparities in Chile and the U.S. Despite adopting nearly all World Health Organization recommendations to reduce tobacco demand, Chile continues to face alarmingly high smoking rates: one in three Chilean adults currently smoke—the highest prevalence in Latin America.
Giovenco will collaborate with Universidad Mayor’s Research Center on Society and Health (CISS) and Chile’s Núcleo Milenio para la Evaluación y Análisis de Políticas de Drogas (nDP) to examine tobacco and e-cigarette policy implementation and industry influence. His research will offer comparative insights to inform future regulations, including on emerging cannabis–nicotine co-use issues.
“Chile presents an intriguing and timely case study for understanding the impact of national tobacco control policies. In the coming months, Chile is slated to allow the sale of electronic cigarettes as consumer products (they are currently classified as pharmaceutical devices), raising important questions about the role these lower-risk nicotine products could play in mitigating the country’s smoking epidemic.” – Daniel Giovenco
María Victoria Murillo (May 2025)
Research focus: The Political Economy of Land Conservation in Latin America
María Victoria Murillo, Professor of Political Science and Director of Columbia’s Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), will investigate the political and institutional factors shaping conservation outcomes in Latin America, using Chile as a key case study. Her research will focus on the 2023 creation of Chile’s Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service (SBAP), exploring how partnerships among the state, NGOs, and local communities influence land use governance and deforestation.
Murillo will analyze emblematic cases such as Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park and examine tensions between international NGOs focused on climate and biodiversity conservation, and local actors—including Indigenous communities and small-scale producers—seeking to mitigate the impacts of extractive industries.
She will also organize a public conference on the challenges facing democracy in Latin America, in collaboration with the Santiago Center and Juan Pablo Luna, Professor at Universidad Católica’s School of Government, with hopes to include scholars from Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Santiago.
“Deforestation tends to decline in the immediate aftermath of protected area creation, and Chile, with relatively high state capacity, provides an ideal context for analysis. I plan to study the creation and implementation of the SBAP to understand its impact on land conservation, based on prior experience. Chile currently has 106 terrestrial protected areas, covering around 20% of its territory.” – María Victoria Murillo
These residencies will not only advance each scholar’s research but also strengthen Columbia’s ties with Chilean universities, government agencies, and civil society. The Santiago Center looks forward to supporting their work and sharing the insights that emerge from these collaborative exchanges.