Denisa Jashari, assistant professor of history, has received the 2025 Latin American Research Review (LARR)-University of Florida Best Article Award for her article, “The Chilean Christians for Socialism Movement: Liberationist, Third Worldist, and Utopian.” The article was published in 2024.

In the article, Jashari traces the roots, emergence and activities of the Cristianos por el Socialismo (CpS, or Christians for Socialism) movement during the 1960s and early 1970s in Chile. Using archives, primary sources and oral interviews, she explores how the CpS promoted a dynamic and creative convergence of Marxism and Christianity, blending ideas of utopia and liberation with critiques of capitalist oppression. Though members faced repression or exile after the CIA-backed coup against Chile’s president Salvador Allende in 1973, the CpS had a regional and transnational impact, she argues.

The LARR-University of Florida Best Article Award is given to the best research article published by the LARR in the last year. The award is presented at the annual international congress of the Latin American Studies Association.

Jashari is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Spatial Conflicts: Producing the Urban Poor in Santiago, Chile, 1872-1994.” Research for the project has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation and the Tinker Foundation. She also received a Syracuse University Humanities Center Maxwell Faculty Fellowship for Spring 2026, which supports faculty research and creative projects as well as Humanities Center programming.

Jashari is an advisory board member and senior research associate in the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean.

By Michael Kelly