The Centre of Latin American Studies is delighted to congratulate Dr Ange La Furcia, who has been awarded the 2026 LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Dissertation Award.
Dr La Furcia completed her PhD at CLAS with the thesis Sea Antics: The Politics of Beauty and Transwomen in the Colombian Western Caribbean, supervised by Dr Pedro Mendes Loureiro and Dr R. Sánchez-Rivera. Her research focuses on the politics of beauty among trans women in the Colombian Western Caribbean, drawing on long-term ethnographic research and community work in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and Ketlina.
The LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Dissertation Award recognises outstanding doctoral research that combines scholarly excellence with engaged scholarship and social impact. The award was presented during the LASA 2026 Welcome Ceremony.
This is a very special recognition for CLAS, as Dr La Furcia’s award-winning thesis was developed during her doctoral studies at the Centre. We are proud to see her work receive this important international acknowledgement and warmly congratulate her on this achievement.
Dr La Furcia’s thesis is available open access through Apollo, the University of Cambridge repository.
Read the open-access thesis: Sea Antics: The Politics of Beauty and Transwomen in the Colombian Western Caribbean
Photos courtesy of Dr Ange La Furcia.
