Alejandro Velasco is Associate Professor of History at New York University, and former Executive Editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas from 2015 to 2021. His research focuses on social movements, urban politics, and democratization, and has appeared in journals including the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Latin American Research Review, Labor, and others. Velasco’s first book Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela (University of California Press, 2015), won the 2016 Fernando Coronil Prize for best book on Venezuela, awarded biennially by the Section on Venezuelan Studies of the Latin American Studies Association. A frequent media contributor, his editorials and analysis have appeared in NACLA, Nueva Sociedad, The Nation, the New York Times, In These Times, the Washington Post, Current History, History News Network, BBC History Magazine, and others. Velasco also frequently contributes radio and television commentary in outlets including NPR, MSNBC/MSNow, Al Jazeera, CBS, France 24, the BBC, and the CBC.