Angus McNelly

Dr Angus McNelly BSc, Hons, MSc

Lecturer in International Relations

Dr Angus McNelly obtained his PhD in Politics and International Relations from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in 2019. His PhD dissertation examined the experiences of the Left in power of urban working-class groups in Bolivia in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. During the course of his PhD he worked as a teaching associate at QMUL and King’s College London (KCL).

Between January 2019 and August 2020, he was a Lecturer in International Development at QMUL before teaching at London South Bank University and working as a research assistant at SOAS University of London during the 2020/21 academic year.

Prior to entering academia, he worked as a secondary school teacher in North London, teaching the unusual combination of Maths and Spanish. During this period, he also worked with foster children in Islington through Equal Education.

Responsibilities within the university
  • Lecturer, Politics and Development: Africa and Asia
  • Seminar leader, Europe without Borders
  • Seminar leader, Introduction to Politics and International Relations

Recognition
  • Managing Editor, Alternautas, 2019 – present
  • Blog Editor, Latin American Geographies, 2020 – present
  • Co-coordinator, Urban and Regional Political Economy Working Group, International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE), 2018 – present
  • Organiser, Latin American Anthropology Seminar Series, Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), 2015
  • Co-organiser, Latin American Marxism Reading Group, UCL School of the Americas, 2014 – 2016
  • Member, Latin American Studies Association, 2017 – present
  • Member, Society for Latin American Studies, 2015 – present
  • Member, American Association of Geographers, 2020 – present
  • Member, International Sociological Association, 2017

Research / Scholarly interests

My research can be divided into three intertwined strands investigating: (1) development at capitalism’s peripheries; (2) the political economy of Latin America; and (3) infrastructure, natural resource governance and energy transitions.

My first research strand interrogates the (re-)production of the peripheries of capitalism. It has already formed into a monograph entitled Peripheral Visions: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia, under review with the University of Pittsburgh Press.

The second strand of my research agenda uses macroeconomic and firm level data to analyse the political economy of Latin America. I have signed a book contract with Routledge to write a country profile of Bolivia for their Development Economics Series. Over the coming five years, I will expand my focus from the Bolivian case to examine the political economy of the region and intervene in debates over the legacy of the Latin American Pink Tide.

My third research strand addresses natural resource infrastructure and governance. I am currently working on a multinational project investigating the impacts the COVID-19 pandemic the governance of natural resources, and policy proposals for economic recovery in Latin America. Together with national teams in Colombia and Peru, Dr Tobias Franz and I applied for a Trans-Atlantic Platform Grant for the project. This project responds to the urgent need to confront the role of natural resource governance in tackling climate change.

Funded Research Projects

  • Three-year ESRC studentship, Experiences of the Left in Power: State Formation, Class Formation and the Production of Space in Urban Bolivia, £15,862 per annum (2015–2018). Outputs: PhD thesis
  • T-AP RRR The limits of extractive growth: COVID-19, natural resource governance and developmental futures in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, €591,750 (2022–2025). Under review.

Media activity

Podcasts

Television

Magazine Articles

Recent publications

Peer-reviewed Articles

  • McNelly, A. 2021. “Baroque Modernity in Latin America: Situating Indigeneity, Urban Indigeneity and the Popular.” Bulletin of Latin American, 00(0), pp.1–15.
  • McNelly, A. 2020. The Incorporation of Social Organizations under the MAS in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives, 47(4), pp.76–95.
  • McNelly, A. 2020, Neostructuralism and its Class Character in the Political Economy of Bolivia under Evo Morales. New Political Economy (Impact factor 3.085), 25(3), pp.419–438.
  • McNelly, A. 2019, Labour Bureaucracy and Labour Officialdom in Evo Morales’ Bolivia. Development and Change, 50(4), pp.896–922.
  • McNelly, A. 2017. The contours of Gramscian theory in Bolivia: From government rhetoric to radical critique. Constellations, 24(3), pp.432–446.

Books

  • McNelly, A., R&R. Peripheral Visions: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
  • McNelly, A., under contract. The Political Economy of Bolivia: Economic, Social and Political Development. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
  • McNelly, A. forthcoming. Experiencias de la izquierda en poder: Formación del estado, formación de clase y la
    producción del espacio en Bolivia urbano. La Paz: CEDLA.
    Book chapters.
  • McNelly, A. 2021. “Crisis Time, Class Formation and the End of Evo Morales.” In Bolivia at the Crossroads: Politics, Economy, and Environment in a Time of Crisis, edited by Soledad Valdivia Rivera. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Book Reviews

  • McNelly, A. 2021. “Review of Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism.” Society and Space. February 15, 2021
    McNelly, A. 2020. “Goodale, Mark (2019) A Revolution in Fragments: Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology and Practice in Bolivia, Duke University Press (Durham and London), Xv + 297 Pp. £90.00 Hbk, £22.99 Pbk.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 39 (4): 540–42.

Other Publications