Luis Gabriel Galán-Guerrero

Luis Gabriel Galán-Guerrero, doctoral candidate in History at the University of Oxford, St. Anne's College. 

My research focuses on the social and political history of Colombia and Britain in the long nineteenth-century. I am interested in the history of the state and politics understood in very broad terms, the history of the family and the aristocracy and upper classes. 

My doctoral thesis examines the reform of the British Civil Service, by focusing on developments in the Treasury department, c. 1848-1914. I seek to illuminate under what conditions government patronage was challenged and how a transition towards other forms of civil administration, appointments, promotions, and pensions got underway. In the process, I demonstrate that these reforms were developed in ways that reflected and were influenced by changing expectations and attitudes to public offices, the life course, the family, and class. The purpose of my thesis is, therefore, to explore an important shift in British administrative, political, and social history.

A second strand in my research examines the political and social history of Colombia. Over the last couple of years, my work has focused on congressmen, democracy, political communications, and the Spanish American revolutions, from both an individual perspective and in collaboration with Eduardo Posada-Carbó and Antonio Annino. As a result, my work has been published in academic journals in Europe and the Americas, including Anuario de Historia de América Latina, Historia Crítica, Latin American Research Review, and Journal of Latin American Studies [forthcoming].