Latin American Network

The Human Development and Capability Association Latin American Network (HDCA-LA) is a multidisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners with two main broad objectives. First, to produce high-quality and policy-relevant academic knowledge on different topics on development studies in Latin America using the normative language of the Human Development and Capability Approach. Second, to trigger transformative actions that increase the actual freedom that people in Latin America have to lead the life they value and to build just societies.

The HDCA-LA  has strong and permanent links with the Asociación Latinoamericana y del Caribe para el Estudio de las Capacidades Humanas (ALCADECA). Since its creation in 2006, ALCADECA has actively promoted debate and collaborative work about Human Development in Latin America both in Spanish and Portuguese. It has organized a number of bi-annual conferences that had taken place in different cities in the region such as México City (2006, Universidad Iberoamericana), Montevideo (2008, 2016, Universidad de la República), Porto Alegre (2010, Pontificia Universidad de Rio Grande do Sul), Buenos Aires (2012, Universidad Lomas de Zamora), Lima (2014, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Puebla (2019, Universidad de las Américas). We are currently working together on the next ALCADECA conference which is expected to take place in 2021.

The HDCA-LA network’s main activities are to facilitate communication between the researchers in the region, to share relevant information, to organize academic events, and to provide different kinds of opportunities to build an inclusive and diverse space for discussion on topics related to human development in Latin America. While we strongly encourage all colleagues interested in this group to affiliate to the HDCA, it is possible to be added to the HDCA-LA mailing list without having an active HDCA membership. Nevertheless, access to HDCA’s important resources such as the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities is available only for people with an active HDCA membership.

In the near future, the HDCA-LA will organize a number of activities ranging from the elaboration of a list containing selected bibliography produced by Latin American scholars, the annual promotion of publications from its members to the organization of webinars and online work in progress workshops.