Santiago Bestilleiro Lettini
Santiago Bestilleiro Lettini is a historian of Latin America.
His work focuses on the long nineteenth century with a transnational perspective. Santiago’s research explores how political and economic notions of “resource”, “progress” and “potential productivity” interacted to shape the trajectory of an extensive ecological region of South America: the grasslands of Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. His doctoral dissertation, The Greater Pampas. Politics, Environment and the Rise of Capitalism in the Río de la Plata Prairies (1770-1920), not only analyzes the material and ideological factors that transformed this biome but also how the biome’s characteristics forged the capacities and limits of the States that emerged on it. Santiago’s approach bridges environmental, political, and economic history to offer a renovated framework of study that challenges nation-centered histories and classic periodization.
Before coming to Georgetown, Santiago was trained in Political and Economic History at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, from where he received a bachelor's and a master's degree. In Argentina, his research focused on the effects of the Napoleonic Wars on the Río de la Plata region in the late colonial period and the revolutionary era. Santiago also took graduate courses at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, The University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and El Colegio de México. He also received scholarships and grants from prestigious institutions, including the Fulbright Commission, the Georgetown Americas Institute, and the Latin American Studies Association.
His teaching experience in Argentina and the United States includes courses in Latin American, European, U.S., and Global History. Santiago also takes pleasure in participating in interdisciplinary debates across different regions. He is a member of diverse international academic associations and has presented his work at conferences in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States.