Julio Cotler Program
Higher education as an instrument for reducing social inequalities and building the institutional foundations of democratic systems
About the Julio Cotler program
The Julio Cotler Programme is born, in the framework of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the creation of OBREAL in 2024, as a tribute to Professor Julio Cotler (1932 – 2019), whose belief in the transformative power of higher education to address social inequalities inspires this initiative.
Aiming to be a platform for emerging voices, the programme has targeted young academics in their final year of undergraduate studies, as well as graduates in their final two years of undergraduate studies from all disciplines, including researchers, activists and policy makers who have not yet published an article in a peer-reviewed journal or academic compilations.
Program Results
This first edition of the Julio Cotler programme received hundreds of submissions on Education, Social Inequality and Strengthening Democracy for both calls: the one designed specifically for participants from Peru and the one for participants from the rest of Latin America or from any OBREAL member institution.
After a rigorous selection process and a dynamic intellectual exchange workshop, an expert jury has selected the 2 most outstanding articles from each call. The authors of the selected articles will receive a financial prize of 2,000 euros and their articles will be published online with free access.
Selected articles of the 2024 Julio Cotler Program
Selected articles from the Call for Peru
“Political instability in contemporary Peru. Presidential Survivals and Collapses”
Manuel Ernesto Aguirre Cahua
*The article will be available soon
“The de-institutionalising circle of democracy in Peru: structures of political participation conditioned by rational power decisions”
Franco Rueda
*The article will be available soon
Selected articles from the Call for Latin America and OBREAL member institutions
“Progress and setbacks in university quality and access in Peru over the last 30 years”
Carlos Cuadra
*The article will be available soon
“Migration crisis and the border. An analysis of the migrant in Biden’s and Trump’s speeches”
Génesis Oriana Peserga
*The article will be available soon
About the process
About the Award Ceremony
Julio Cotler and OBREAL
Julio Cotler (1932 – 2019) was, for most OBREAL members, its main intellectual figure during the first era of the association (2004 – 2007). Cotler’s professional life was linked to education from his start as an elementary school teacher in Huarochiri in the 1950s while doing his fieldwork for his anthropology degree, to his integration as a professor, after his postgraduate studies in Bordeaux, Caracas and Cambridge/Massachusetts, at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, and as a visiting professor at Universities in New York, Berkeley, Notre Dame, Paris, Salamanca, Madrid, Bologna, Quito, and Mexico City. The conviction that higher education can contribute to reduce social inequalities was central to Julio Cotler’s life and intellectual activity, oriented, in a more general perspective, to the discussion and affirmation of democracy and the necessary construction of political and social institutions that give democracy a solid foundation.
