Luca DeCola

Class of 2026

Faculty Advisors: Mikael Wolfe, Emma Shaw Crane

Peer Mentor: Christian Roblez-Baez

Luca DeCola is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned his associate's degree from Bunker Hill Community College. With the Community College Academic Honors Scholarship, he transferred to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, completing his BA in History with a minor in Afro-American Studies. For his undergraduate senior thesis, he received the Potash Travel Grant for Latin America, allowing him to travel to Bogotá, Colombia. There, Luca interviewed survivors of the State-led elimination of 5,733 members and suspected sympathizers of the Patriotic Union (UP), a left-wing political party formed there in 1985.

After graduating in the Spring of 2023, Luca moved to Colombia to continue researching the history of the UP and the country's internal armed conflict. In Colombia, he conducted archival research and carried out oral histories with UP President Senator Aída Avella, the Colombian Ambassador to the United States Daniel García-Peña, and ex-combatants from the FARC guerrillas, among others. Luca has been published in Jacobin Magazine and Revista: The Harvard Review of Latin America, and has presented his research at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).