The following reports on the contemporary dynamics of Cuban society were commissioned for Cuba Info from several of the nation's leading experts on Cuba, including faculty affiliates of the CRI.

• Gustavo Perez Firmat:
  Havana Mañana: Cuba in the American Imagination
  Gustavo Perez Firmat is the David Feinson Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. A writer and scholar, he is the author of many books of cultural and literary criticism, among them The Cuban Condition (1989), Life on the Hyphen (1994), Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio (2000), and Tongue Ties (2003). He is also the author of a memoir, Next Year in Cuba (1995), and of several volumes of poetry, most recently Scar Tissue (2005).
• Xavier Utset:
  The Cuban Democracy Movement: An Analytical Overview
  Xavier Utset is an independent consultant with over nine years of experience in the fields of international development and democracy & governance. Xavier holds a M.A. in International Development from The George Washington University and a B.A. in International Relations from Florida International University.
• Jorge Domínguez:
  Does Fidel Have More Lives than a Cat?: Implications for President Raúl Castro
  Jorge Domínguez is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has authored, co-authored and edited numerous books and articles. His most recent books include: The United States and Mexico. Between Partnership and Conflict (Routledge, 2001); Toward México´s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections and Public Opinion (Routledge, 1999); and Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean (John Hopkins University Press, 1998). He has been a member of the editorial board of Political Science Quarterly, Latin American Research review, Foreign Affairs en español, Cuban Studies, and Revista de ciencias sociales, among other journals. Dr. Domínguez is past president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and of the Institute of Cuban Studies. He has been editor of several television historical series. Jorge Domínguez is a keen analyst of Cuba´s political history and one of the shining “stars” in the field of Cuban studies.
• Nicolas Quintana:
  Havana and Its Landscapes - A City into the Future: A Sustainable Approach to Urban Design
  Architecture Professor Nicolas Quintana is the director of the project “Havana and its Landscapes,” currently underway at FIU's School of Architecture.  The project's goal is to create a series of environmental and architectural guidelines that would protect the city’s character during the transition period, while addressing critical issues such as the acute housing shortage.  Prof. Quintana, who specializes in urbanism, has collaborated closely with architects of the caliber of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, widely known as Le Corbusier, and Walter Adolph Gropius.
• Margaret E. Crahan and Ariel Armony:
  Does Civil Society Exist in Cuba?
  Dr. Margaret E. Crahan is the Dorothy Epstein Professor of Latin American History at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. As of February 1, 2008 she will become the Director of the Kozmetsky Center for Excellence in International Finance at St. Edward’s University. She received her doctorate from Columbia University and from 1982-1994 she was the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Power and Political Process at Occidental College and from 1993-1994 the Marous Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She has served on the Executive Councils of the Latin American Studies Association and the Pacific Coast Council of Latin American Studies, as well as on the boards of the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright Program), and the Board of Trustees of St. Edward’s University. She currently serves as the Vice President of the Board of the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights, as well as a member of the Board of the Washington Office of Latin America. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Latin America, 2007-08. Dr. Crahan has authored/coauthored/ edited/co-edited over one hundred articles and books including Africa and the Caribbean: Legacies of a Link (with Franklin W. Knight); Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas; The City and the World: New York’s Global Future (with Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush); Religion, Culture and Society: The Case of Cuba, and The Wars on Terrrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and US Foreign Policy (with Thomas G. Weiss and John Goering).
  
  Ariel Armony is Katz Distinguished Associate Professor of Government at Colby College. An expert on comparative democratization and civil society, he is the author of The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization (Stanford University Press, 2004), among other publications. He was a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In 2008-09, he will be a Fulbright scholar at Nankai University, People's Republic of China.
• Antonio José Ponte:
  La Habana: ciudad y archivo
  Antonio José Ponte (Matanzas, Cuba, 1964) Poeta, ensayista y narrador. Ha publicado, entre otros títulos, “Las comidas profundas” (Deleatur, Angers, 1997), “Asiento en las ruinas” (Renacimiento, Sevilla, 2005), “In the cold of the Malecón & other stories” (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2000), “Cuentos de todas partes del Imperio” (Deleatur, Angers, 2000), “Un seguidor de Montaigne mira La Habana/Las comidas profundas” (Verbum, Madrid, 2001), “Contrabando de sombras” (Mondadori,Barcelona, 2002), “El libro perdido de los origenistas” (Renacimiento, Sevilla, 2004), “Un arte de hacer ruinas y otros cuentos” (Fondo de Cultura Económica, México D.F., 2005) y “La fiesta vigilada” (Anagrama, Barcelona, 2007). Es co-director de la revista Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana”, que se publica en Madrid.
  
• Marifeli Pérez-Stable:
  Cuban Politics After 1990
  Marifeli Pérez-Stable is vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC and a professor of sociology at Fiorida International University. She is the author of The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (OUP,2nd edition, 1999) and editor of Cuba en el siglo XXI: Ensayos sobre la transición (Editorial Colibrí, 2006). Her column on Latin American topics appears every other Thursday in the Miami Herald.

• Alejandro M. de la Fuente:
  Racism, Culture, and Mobilization
  Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, Alejandro M. de la Fuente focuses on Latin American and Caribbean history and comparative slavery and race relations. An expert on race relations in Cuba, he is the author of A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (University of North Carolina Press 2001).
• Juan J. López:
  Alternative Futures in Cuba
  Juan J. López is the Director of Research at Florida International University's Latin American and Caribbean Center. Among his scholarly publications is Democracy Delayed: The Case of Castro's Cuba (The Johns Hopkins University Press 2002).
• Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado:
  The Current Status and Future Prospects for Oil Exploration in Cuba
  Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Assistant Director for Research and Outreach of the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has authored numerous books, articles and reports on various dimensions of energy development policy in Cuba since 1990 and has visited the island over 20 times in that period.
• Cecilia Bobes:
  Sucesión del poder en Cuba: Repensando el escenario del cambio
  Velia Cecilia Bobes León is a Professor of Social Sciences at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Mexico City. An expert on Cuban civil society, she is the co-editor of La transición invisible: Sociedad y cambio político en Cuba (Oceáno Press 2004) and the author of Los laberintos de la imaginación: repertorio simbólico, identidades y actores del cambio social en Cuba (El Colegio de México 2000).
• Ted Henken:
  Dirigentes, Diplogente, Indigentes, and Delincuentes: Official Corruption and Underground Honesty in Today's Cuba
  Ted Henken is a Professor of Black and Hispanic Studies and Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is currently co-authoring a book about the development of micro-enterprise and the underground economy in socialist Cuba.
• Juan Antonio Blanco:
  Reconciliation and its Actors
  Juan Antonio Blanco (Cuba) holds a PhD in History and took post graduate studies in conflict transformation . He has worked as a university professor, diplomat, political analyst and executive director at a human rights Canadian non governmental organization. Dr. Blanco has made presentations at prestigious think tanks and universities in several countries in the Americas and Europe, and is the author of numerous articles and essays. In 1992 he founded in Havana the Center Felix Varela on ethics and sustainable development. His book (Third Millenium, an alternative view of postmodernity, Havana, 1993) had three editions in Cuba and one in Spain. He lives in Canada since 1997.
• Silvia Pedraza:
  Church and State in Cuba’s Revolution
  Silvia Pedraza is Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was born and raised in Cuba, from where she immigrated with her family at the age of 12. Long a Wolverine, she was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Her Ph. D. in Sociology is from the University of Chicago. Silvia Pedraza's research interests are in the areas of the sociology of immigration, race, and ethnicity in America, as well as the sociology of Cuba's revolution and exodus. She places particular stress on comparative studies, both historical and contemporary. She says that the leitmotif of all her work lies in seeking to understand the causes and consequences of immigration as a historical process that forms and transforms nations.
  
• Cristina Venegas:
  Cuban Filmmaking: Assessing Challenges and Opportunities
  Cristina Venegas is Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her teaching and writing focus on transnational and global media with an emphasis on Latin America, Spanish-language film and television in the U.S., and digital technologies. Her book Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual and Digital Media in Cuba about the emergence of Cuban digital media since the 1990s is forthcoming from Rutgers in 2009. She has also written about film and political culture, revolutionary imagination in the Americas, telenovelas, contemporary Latin American cinema, Cuban cinema, and international film co-productions.
• Eusebio Mujal-Leon:
  EXCEPTIONALISM AND BEYOND: THE CASE OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN CUBA
  Eusebio Mujal-Leon is a professor of Government at Georgetown and director of its Cuba XXI Project. He is the author of numerous articles and books. Among the more recent is a co-authored chapter on “Is Castroism a Political Religion?” and several articles, including "Much Ado About Something? Regime Change in Cuba" in Problems of Post-Communism and "Can Cuba Change? Tension in the Elite" in the Journal of Democracy.
• Manuel Orozco:
  On Remittances, Markets and the Law: The Cuban Experience in Present Times
  Manuel Orozco is senior associate and director of remittances and development at the Inter-American Dialogue. He has conducted extensive research, policy analysis and advocacy on issues relating to global flows of remittances, and migration and development worldwide. Dr. Orozco is chair of Central America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. He is also adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he is senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Migration. He frequently testifies before Congress and has spoken before the United Nations. Orozco holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin, masters in public administration and Latin American studies, and a BA in international relations from the National University of Costa Rica.
• Adrian Hearn:
  Cuba and China: Lessons and Opportunities for the United States
  Dr. Adrian H. Hearn is a research fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Sydney. He has conducted research in Cuba (three years) and China (ten months), and is currently undertaking a study of Chinese engagement with Latin America. He is author of Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development (Duke University Press 2008), China and Latin America: The Social Foundations of a Global Alliance (Duke University Press, forthcoming) and editor of Cultura, Tradición, y Comunidad: Perspectivas sobre el Desarrollo y Participación en Cuba (Imagen Contemporánea and UNESCO Center for Human Development 2008).
• Damian Fernandez and Katrin Hansing:
  Social Justice in Cuba: Now and in the Future
  

In addition, the following links provide access to research on Cuba conducted by the Cuban Research Institute's affiliated faculty:

• Damián Fernández:
  "The Politics of Youth in Cuba: Patterns, Dynamics, and Future Challenges."

  Appendix B in Cuba After Castro: Legacies, Challenges, and Impediments edited by Edward González and Kevin F. McCarthy. Prepared for the National Defense Research Institute, May 2004.