
Constanza Dalla Porta
Constanza Dalla Porta is a first year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, earning a B.A. in History and receiving the 2012 Jaime Eyzaguirre award (valedictorian). Upon graduation, she pursued a diploma in Education, Memory, and Human Rights at the Museo de la Memoria and the Universidad de Chile, and successfully completed an M.A. in History also at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Her master’s thesis focuses on the history of rural sociopolitical violence in the midst of the Chilean agrarian reform and the eve of the dictatorship (1965-1975). Through the analysis of how peasants experienced the state, this thesis sheds light upon larger narratives of political violence and deeply problematizes the binary understanding of democracy and dictatorship in Cold War Chile.
During her career, Dalla Porta has received a Comisión Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONICYT) fellowship and one of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos’ thesis awards. Before coming to Princeton, Constanza worked as an education specialist at the Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi, one of the foremost memory sites in Latin America.
Dalla Porta’s research interests include the modern history of Latin America and Chile within a global landscape of human rights struggles. Her doctoral dissertation project is a study of impunity and its role in shaping social, political, and cultural developments in post-conflict societies.