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About Us Gustavo Adolfo Islas Cadena

Gustavo Adolfo Islas Cadena is a doctoral researcher at the HCIAS and the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of Heidelberg University and a member of the HCIAS Doctoral Research Group “Communication and Society in Ibero-America”. He holds a scholarship of the Secretary of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI) of the Mexican government. He holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as well as a postgraduate specialization in Geomatics from the Center for Research in Geospatial Information Sciences (CentroGeo). He has worked as a research assistant at UNAM and FLACSO Mexico, and as a lecturer at the Universidad Nacional Rosario Castellanos. He is currently a member of the Taller para Jóvenes Investigadores sobre las Derechas (Workshop for Young Researchers on the Right-Wing) at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Mexico.

Gustavo Adolfo Islas Cadena

His doctoral project, supervised by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alejandro Ecker, explores how populist leaders construct the image of the “enemy” across different national socioeconomic contexts. By comparing cases from both the Global North and South, his research seeks to understand how economic and political conditions shape these discursive strategies. His broader research interests include the economic diplomacy of China and the United States toward Latin America, great power geopolitics, and regional integration projects in Latin America.

Selected Publications

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  • Hernández, Paola; Islas, Gustavo and Osorio, Noe (2024). Spatio-temporal analysis of the main types of road accidents in Mexico City (2018-2022). In Carlos, Hugo et al. (Eds.), Recent Developments in Geospatial Information Science. (pp. 19-30). Springer.
  • Islas, Gustavo (2024). El financiamiento de la República Popular China en América Latina ante los virajes políticos latinoamericanos: los casos de Brasil y Argentina. TongDao. Revista Latinoamericana De Estudios De China Contemporánea, 1(1). 
  • Islas, Gustavo (2023). Relaciones económicas después del reconocimiento: el caso de Centroamérica y la RPCh. In Vargas, Jean-Paul; Murillo, Jonatthan and Chavarría, David (Eds.), ¿El siglo chino? Política, geopolítica y transformación nacional. Instituto Centroamericano de Administración Pública. pp. 221-238. Costa Rica.
  • Aparicio, Mariana; Islas, Gustavo and López, Iván (2021). Un diálogo entre discursos y hechos: el acercamiento del Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur) y la Alianza del Pacífico (AP). Foro Internacional, 61 (1), pp. 45–81. 
  • Islas, Gustavo; Aparicio, Mariana and Villalobos, Karla (2021). ¿Aliados o intereses energéticos en la era de Maduro? La respuesta de India, la República Popular China y Rusia en Venezuela a las sanciones económicas impuestas por Estados Unidos. In Morgenfeld, Leandro and Aparicio, Mariana (Eds.), El legado de Trump en un mundo en crisis. CLACSO and Siglo XXI. pp. 371-396. 

Recent Presentations

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October 14, 2025. Sanciones y discursos: La diplomacia económica de Trump y su recepción en plataformas digitales. XXXVIII Congreso Anual de la Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Internacionales.
November 14, 2023. Spatio-temporal analysis of the main types of road incidents in Mexico City 2018-2022. International Conference on Geospatial Information Sciences (iGISc 2023).
February 16, 2023. El desplazamiento de Estados Unidos como financiador al desarrollo en América Latina ante el crecimiento chino. Segundo Congreso Bienal de Estudios Norteamericanos.

Contact

Gustavo Adolfo Islas Cadena

Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS
Brunnengasse 1 69117, Heidelberg

Email: gustavo.cadena(at)uni-heidelberg.de 

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