Congratulations to former Visiting Fellow Taylor Boas (2009-10), who was promoted to full professor of political science and Latin American studies at Boston University earlier this year. He is also the department's chair.
Additionally, Boas published a new book earlier this year with Cambridge University Press, titled Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World. Focusing on evangelical Christians in Latin America, the book argues that religious minorities seek and gain electoral representation when they face significant threats to their material interests and worldview, and when their community is not internally divided by cross-cutting cleavages. Boas demonstrates how differences in Latin American evangelicals' political ambitions emerged as a result of two critical junctures: episodes of secular reform in the early twentieth century and the rise of sexuality politics at the turn of the twenty-first, exploring case studies in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, as well as secondary case studies in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.
Boas’s research examines electoral politics and political behavior in Latin America, focusing on topics such as religion, accountability, campaigns, and the mass media. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.