Nicholas Yoder

Nicholas Osoro-Yoder is a PhD candidate in the Latin American History program at UC Davis. His areas of expertise include the Cold War in Latin America, with a particular interest in human rights and democratic movements. He completed his undergraduate studies at Goshen College in 2018 and earned a Masters in Education from Johns Hopkins University in 2020, working as an elementary and middle school teacher for five years in Texas and Peru. He began the PhD program at UC Davis in 2023, studying under Charles F. Walker. He is currently working on a project about Amazonian political organizations in Peru’s Selva Central in the 1980s and 90s. During that time, they made significant achievements campaigning against forest colonization, even as the region experienced intense violence between the Maoist Sendero Luminoso insurgency and the Peruvian State. Nicholas’ research aims to show how the local indigenous assemblies provided Asháninka communities with a form of self-organization and internal legitimacy that proved crucial in responding to the crisis effectively. In addition to IGCC, his research and archival work has been supported by the Hemispheric Institute for the Americas and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.