Dr Jessica A. Fernández de Lara Harada

Jessica A. Fernández de Lara Harada is a historian with an interest in the legal, social and cultural history of Mexico. Jessica holds a joint appointment between the Faculty of History and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (Latin America Centre, LAC), and is an Associate Member with St Antony’s College. Her primary fields of expertise are the comparative and global histories of Mexico and Japan, Asia Latin America, and decolonial approaches in history and social thought.

Currently, Jessica is developing her first monograph, provisionally titled ‘Non-ethics of war: Racism, Dispossession and the Concentration System in the Disappearance of Mexican Japanese’. It is a social history of race, mestizaje and resistance in Mexico that centres the transpacific experiences of Mexicans of Japanese origins during the 19th and 20th centuries to map, analyse and connect ongoing global practices of dispossession, elimination and accumulation.

Jessica received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022, as a Gates Scholar, and became an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy in 2021. From 2022 to 2023, Jessica was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on ‘Empire, Colonialism and Decoloniality’ and ‘Structural, Relational and Intersectional Formations of Race’ with a focus on the colonial and post-colonial relations of Asia and Latin America.

From 2018 to 2022, Jessica was a temporary Lecturer and Supervisor at the University of Cambridge. From 2018 to 2019, Jessica was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Historical Studies at El Colegio de México. Previously, Jessica completed an MA in Latin American Studies (with Distinction) at University College London, and a BA (First Class Honours) in Law, and Economic Competition, at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She is a qualified lawyer with over five years of experience working in law firms, the private sector, and government.

Jessica has collaborated in interdisciplinary, cross-regional, and multi-lingual research groups, public events, and grant applications for major global research networks. She has conducted fieldwork and archival research in Mexico, Japan, the United States, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Her research has been awarded funding from international and national research bodies. She is a member of the Latin American Studies Association and the Association for Asian Studies. Jessica would be happy to hear from colleagues, students and members of the public who are working on any of the topics relating to her research projects and interests.