Andra B. Chastain

Chastain is a historian of modern Latin America with a focus on twentieth-century Chile and Mexico in a global context. Her research interests include urban and environmental history, the history of science and technology, the global Cold War, and political and cultural history. Her award-winning monograph, Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City (Yale University Press, 2024), examines the history of the largest metro system in South America, a major state infrastructure project that cuts across democracy and dictatorship. The Spanish translation is forthcoming with the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2026. She is also the co-editor, with Timothy W. Lorek, of Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, the PEO Foundation, the American Historical Association, and the Conference on Latin American History. She is a board member of the Global Urban History Project.

Chastain’s current research examines the history of urban air pollution in the Americas with case studies of Santiago, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. In 2025-26, she is a Fulbright-García Robles fellow in Mexico City at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.