Towards interdisciplinarity: Recent book acquisitions by CIDE Region Centro’s library

One of the reasons that attracted me to CIDE Region Centro, and to take a professor position here, was the premise (and the promise) of a hub for interdisciplinary scholarship on regional studies. CIDE Region Centro has two main research programmes, the Programme on Drug Policy and the Programme on Regional Studies. I work mostly on the second one, although given how much environmental work we do, we might at some point open a Program in Environmental Studies. That still is yet to be seen, but I’m quite hopeful. I was trained in an environment that encouraged cross-fertilization and learning from other bodies of literature. My PhD itself is interdisciplinary, and my doctoral dissertation’s theoretical and analytical frameworks borrowed from chemical engineering, environmental politics, comparative public policy, anthropology and sociology, and economic geography.

I recently became CIDE Region Centro’s representative to the Library Acquisitions Committee of CIDE (the entire university), so I am now in charge of coordinating all library resources’ requests by faculty, staff and students. Two key tenets drive my approach to this new task. First, I want CIDE Region Centro’s library to be the best academic library in the central region of Mexico. Second, I want CIDE Region Centro’s book collection to showcase the interdisciplinary nature of our scholarly work. I think so far we’ve been doing great. Below you will find photographs of some of the most recent acquisitions we’ve brought to the library.

Yeah, our students won’t only do quantitative stuff, but they will also learn about ethnographic methods.

And of course, it’s clear that I have an interest in having environmental politics books at CIDE Region Centro. Some of these are specific to my own field of research.