Dr Daniel Gunnar Kressel

I am a historian of Modern Latin American and Iberian history, specializing in the history of transnational right-wing ideologies, networks, and identities during the Cold War era. At the Koch History Centre, I am in the early stages of writing an intellectual history of the Catholic movement Opus Dei.

Research Interests

Trained as a historian of Latin America at Columbia University, my scholarship has thus far touched on various themes, ranging from the rise of post-fascist state ideologies amid Latin America’s 1960s and 1970s authoritarian turn to the peculiar ways in which neo-liberal ideology became popularized in the continent. My most recent book, Hispanic Technocracy: From Fascism to Catholic Authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2025), explores how the Spanish “economic miracle” of the 1960s inspired Argentine and Chilean right-wing circles, thereby challenging previous assumptions about the timing, intellectual origins, and nature of Latin America’s neo-liberal reforms. In a similar vein, my monograph, José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Latin America: The Pursuit of a Fascist Usable Past during the Cold War (Routledge, 2025), excavates the untold story of Latin America’s neo-fascist Falangists and their intransigent campaigns against both democracy and neoliberalism in their countries. Besides right-wing theories of the state and the economy, I am particularly fascinated by the unique cultural anxieties and moral panic that have characterized Latin American conservatism since the 1960s, and, more broadly, by how right-wing ideology has impacted democratic transitions and constitution-building processes in places such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Spain.