Helen Yaffe

I joined the University of Glasgow as Lecturer in Economic and Social History in January 2018 after previously teaching in Economic History at the London School of Economics, in History at the University College London and in Development Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. My teaching focuses on Latin American and Cuban development. At the LSE, I taught the history of economics and the political economy of late development. In 2011, I joined the Geography Department at the University of Leicester as a Research Associate to work with Professor Gavin Brown on the Leverhulme-funded project Non-Stop Against Apartheid: the spaces of transnational solidarity. The project examined the history and geography of the Non-Stop Picket maintained between 1986 and 1990 by the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square opposing apartheid and calling for the release of Nelson Mandela. Our book, Youth Activism and Solidarity: The Non-stop Picket Against Apartheid, was published in 2017.

Since 1995 (as a teenager), I have spent time living and researching in Cuba. My doctoral thesis, undertaken at the LSE, was adapted for publication as Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009. I have continued to research and publish on Cuban development. My new book We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World, is due for publication by Yale University Press in February 2020.