Eve Hayes de Kalaf is a sociolegal scholar with an extensive academic and professional background working in Latin America and the Caribbean. She was Stipendiary Fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) where she organised a major international conference ‘(Re)Imagining Belonging in Latin America and Beyond: Access to Citizenship, Digital Identity and Rights‘. Eve is this year’s Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), School of Advanced Study, University of London where she convenes the Caribbean Studies Seminar Series for CLACS alongside her colleague Dr Jack Webb and the Race, Roots & Resistance Collective, University of Manchester.

In addition to her PhD at CISRUL, Eve holds an MA from the Institute for the Study of the Americas and a BA (Hons) in Modern Language Studies, University of Nottingham. She also obtained a PGDip in Human Development with the United Nations at the Universidad Católica Santo Domingo and is honorary fellow at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool.

Eve is an elected member of the Society for Latin American Studies (2019-2021, 2021-2023) and Treasurer of the Haiti Support Group. She has been awarded a number of prizes for her research, including the Guy Alexandre Prize for Best Paper, Latin American Studies Association (2018), the David Nicholls Memorial Trust Award, University of Oxford (2016), the Isabella Middleton Scholarship Fund and Principal’s Excellence Fund, University of Aberdeen (2015), and a Comparative Statecraft Studentship Award, Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL), University of Aberdeen (2014-2018).

Eve’s  research offers some uncomfortable insights into the use and abuse of modern-day identity-based development ‘solutions’ that aim to provide all people, everywhere with a legal and, increasingly, digital identity. Her monograph ‘Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner’ is part of the Anthem Series in Citizenship and National Identities. The publication is the first to identify a link between the promulgation of ID practices by international organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations with arbitrary measures that retroactively stripped hundreds of thousands of native-born (largely) Haitian-descended citizens of their Dominican citizenship. This was a major and important finding in the fields of statelessness, noncitizenship and international development.

On 1 December 2021, Eve launched her book at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London. The Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Díaz (MIT) and scholar Raj Chetty (St. John’s University) were the discussants with David Howard (University of Oxford) as chair. You can watch the full launch here or see a clip of this event below:

 

Publications

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2021a) Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner. London: Anthem Series on Citizenship and National Identities.

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2021b) ‘How some countries are using digital ID to exclude vulnerable people around the world’, The Conversation.

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2021c) ‘Digital identity, Rights and Citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean: who are we including and who is being left behind? Latin American Diaries Blog.

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2019) ‘Making Foreign: Legal Identity, Social Policy and the Contours of Belonging in the Contemporary Dominican Republic’, in Cruz-Martínez, G. (ed.) Welfare and Social Protection in Contemporary Latin America. London: Routledge.

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2015a) ‘Dominican Republic has taken citizenship from up to 200,000 and is getting away with it’, The Conversation.

• Hayes de Kalaf, E. (2015b) ‘How a group of Dominicans were stripped of their nationality and now face expulsion to Haiti’, The Conversation.