Ignacio Cano: Race & Democracy in the Americas

A deep dive into structural racism and inequality in South Africa and Brazil—with lessons for and from the United States. Ignacio Cano got his joint Ph.D. in sociology and social psychology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 1991. From 1991 to 1993 he worked with UNHCR, focussing on refugees and war-stricken populations in El Salvador. He was also a member of the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador. Cano later developed post-doctoral research at the universities of Surrey (UK), Michigan, Arizona (USA) and Lancaster (UK), centered on research methodology and program evaluation. From 1996 onwards, he worked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on topics related to violence, human rights, public security and education in an NGO called ISER. In 2000, Cano joined the department of social sciences of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is now a full professor of sociology. He is a founder of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Violence (LAV) of the same university. Over the last 20 years, he has researched different issues related to public security, violence, human rights and education and has undertaken impact evaluations of several public security interventions in Latin America. At present he is a visiting researcher at the Safety Lab, Cape Town, South Africa.