New ÉRIGAL Podcast

September 14, 2026 by

ERIGAL

Hosted by Marc-André Anzueto (UQO) and Danielle Coenga Oliveira (UdeM), this podcast gives team members the floor to share their research, reflections, career paths, and a behind-the-scenes look at their work. Because behind the research, the concepts, and the publications, there are also people, stories, questions, and plenty of conversation!

This podcast was produced with the support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ).

Listen to the podcast here:

Full episode list

1. Présentation du balado avec Danielle Coenga-Oliveira et Marc-André Anzueto

In this first episode, our hosts, Marc-André Anzueto and Danielle Coenga-Oliveira, invite us to discover the Research Team on Inclusion and Governance in Latin America (ÉRIGAL): the institutions that make it up, the big questions that drive it, and the research axes that guide its work. They also take the opportunity to introduce themselves, share their own career paths, and talk a bit about their own research. A first encounter to get to know ÉRIGAL… and the people who bring it to life!

2. Françoise Montambeault et Nora Nagels : faire de la recherche ensemble

In this second episode, we meet Françoise Montambeault and Nora Nagels, the two co-directors of ÉRIGAL, but also longtime friends. They tell us about their joint research on collective kitchens in Mexico City, spaces run by women that become genuine sites of citizen participation. We learn why Latin America captivates them, how their friendship began, and why building networks across universities and languages feels essential to them. Between epistemology, positionality, and the pleasure of fieldwork, they also share what drives them to do research: the need to think collectively, to reflect together, and to support one another. An episode that shows research is at its best when it's done together.

3. Tania Islas Weinstein : entre art et science politique

In this third episode, we welcome Tania Islas Weinstein, professor at McGill University. She tells us about her path between Mexico, the United States, and Montreal, and explains how her experiences of migration transformed her view of her home country. She also talks about her work at the crossroads of art and political science, and how artistic creation can open new ways of thinking and producing knowledge.

Throughout the conversation, we touch on multidisciplinarity, positionality, the circulation of concepts, and the challenges of translating knowledge about Latin America. A discussion that also takes us into migration, diaspora, and the ties we keep weaving with the places we leave behind.

4. Anne-Marie Veillette : penser la ville par le corps

In this fourth episode, we welcome Anne-Marie Veillette, whose transdisciplinary path led her to study the city, the body, and women through the processes of peripheral urbanization in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Mexico City. She explains how the body is inscribed in these urban dynamics, and why she chose to compare Brazil and Mexico rather than focus on a single field site.

Throughout the conversation, we discuss the epistemology and positionality of doing research with women from the Global South while coming from the North, as well as the linguistic challenges of fieldwork — learning Portuguese, then Spanish, and juggling both. Anne-Marie Veillette also revisits the idea of a shared "amerifricanity" that helps move beyond the line too often drawn between megacities of the North and South. Finally, she invites us to rethink what it means to "think the city through the body," when the women concerned don't define the body the same way one would in an academic article.

5. Julián Durazo Hermann: médias locaux et politique subnationale en Amérique latine

In this fifth episode, we welcome Julián Durazo Hermann, who talks to us about subnational politics and the role of local media in building democratic spaces in Latin America, drawing on the cases of Veracruz (Mexico) and Bahia (Brazil). He shares his metaphor of the broken mirror as a way of thinking about a democratization full of promise, but also full of limits.

He looks back on his path: how he came to subnational comparison, and how the media became his field of predilection, between personal and professional interests. Multilingual through a life spent across several countries, he sees his contribution to Latin American studies as a dialogue between traditions rather than a translation. He also tells us about his new research projects, how ÉRIGAL continues to nourish his questions, and shares some advice with our listeners.

6. Jean-François Mayer : résistance, marginalisation et travail informel en Amérique latine

In this sixth episode, we welcome Jean-François Mayer, who talks to us about the resistance of marginalized groups in the informal sector, notably through the strategies used by domestic workers in Brazil facing the violence of informal labour, and their use of social media as a tool for mobilization. He approaches these questions from both academic research and music, his other great passion.

He tells us about his path: a childhood in Senegal that nurtured a lasting love for Africa, followed by an almost accidental encounter with Latin America at university. He looks back on his initial, highly positivist training and his shift toward ethnography, grounded in trust, co-construction, and horizontality. He also shares the readings that shaped him, including the work of James C. Scott and Robert Gay, as well as his transition from Mexican to Brazilian fieldwork. Finally, he talks about that distinctive optimism found in Brazil, "country of the future," which persists even in moments of crisis.

7. Julia Islas et Martín Bertolotti : dissidences sexogenrées et regards situés sur la recherche doctorale

In this seventh episode, we welcome Julia Islas and Martín Bertolotti, both doctoral students, who share their reflections on their ongoing research and on what it means to pursue a PhD. Julia studies sexual dissidence groups in Mexico, while Martín works on Argentina and Québec, two field sites that lead them to reflect on their positionality and their commitment to the struggles they study.

They discuss the differences between doing research in contexts of the Global North and South, the particular challenges of living through a PhD as migrants, and questions that run through this journey, such as feeling legitimate, changing one's project along the way, or thinking about the future. They also explain why they chose their respective field sites, what it means to get involved in contexts sometimes hostile to research on sexual dissidence, and how their trajectories lead them both to nuance the fixed categories of North and South.

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-El Sancocho

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