Catalina Vásquez-Marchant

Advisor: Mark Healey

B.A. History, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, 2016
M.A. History, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, 2019

Areas of Interest

Environmental and Urban History of Latin America; Natural Disasters and the Role of the State; Social and Historical Construction of Natural Disasters.

Current Research Interests 

Catalina Vásquez-Marchant is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history specializing in environmental and urban history. She earned her M.A. in History from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2019). Her dissertation, Urban Hydroscape: Water, Urbanization, and the State in Santiago, Chile (1951–1998), examines the relationship between water infrastructure and public housing in Santiago during the second half of the twentieth century.

Her research analyzes how state-led modernization projects and regulatory frameworks shaped urban development amid social conflict. She approaches the city as a contested space in which both pobladores and state actors advanced competing visions of urban life. In addition to human actors, she considers water itself—as natural element, resource, and technology—as central to the making of Santiago as a modern city.

Select Awards and Honors 

The Hugh M. Hamil Graduate Fellowship in Latin American History, University of Connecticut, 2020