Karla Alvarado Romero

Karla Alvarado is a doctoral student 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”. She is a scholarship holder of the Landesgraduiertenförderungsprogramm of the state of Baden-Württemberg, an associate of the Heidelberg Center for Digital Humanities (HCDH), and a member of the Heidelberg Graduate School for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HGGS).

Her research is centered on the connection between information technologies and trade, with a particular emphasis on the role of social media as digital intermediation platforms in the rising phenomenon of ‘social commerce’. She has experience in regional studies and focuses on the trade relationship between Latin America and China. She is also actively investigating the relationship of this region with the US and the EU. Her work also embraces the economic and strategic impacts of Big Tech companies on international trade regulation, global governance, and digital trade policy-making. Her doctoral research project is supervised by HCIAS Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alejandro Ecker.

Karla’s research experience includes a research visit at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy US-Mexico Center in Houston, Texas, holding a scholarship for Graduate Studies from the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (now CONAHCYT), and a research visit at the Center for China-Mexico Studies (CECHIMEX) of the Faculty of Economics at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) as a fellow of the China Research Fellowship Program 2022.