Paula Alonso

Paula is a historian with a specialization in Latin America. She has published several books and numerous academic articles, and is currently writing a history of Argentina for Cambridge University Press. She has been the recipient of many prizes and research grants from institutions in the U.K., Argentina, and the U.S. Born in Buenos Aires, Paula holds a BA from the Catholic University of Argentina (1987), and a PhD (DPhil) from Oxford University (1992). After graduating from Oxford, Paula worked as assistant professor at the University of Bristol and as associate researcher at Warwick University in the U.K. before moving back to Argentina in 1994. She joined the Universidad de San Andrés, becoming tenured associate professor, and designed and launched a PhD program in history that is considered to be the top graduate program in the country. She was also a researcher at Argentina’s prestigious National Science Research Council. In the United States, Paula has held academic appointments at the universities of Maryland and Virginia and at Johns Hopkins, and was the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. She has also held elected and appointed positions with the American Historical Association and the Latin American Studies Association. She is currently professorial lecturer at The George Washington University. Paula met her husband, Andrew Powell, while studying at Oxford; their daughter, Megan Powell ’16, was born in Buenos Aires in 1998. The family moved to the United States in 2005. Having been introduced to the Society of Friends in England by her father-in-law, she is a member of the Bethesda Friends Meeting.