Helen Yaffe
Dr Helen Yaffe is a Professor of Latin American Political Economy at the University of Glasgow and a Visiting Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the London School of Economics, where her teaching focuses on Cuban and Latin American development. Since 1995 she has spent time living and researching in Cuba and participating in solidarity campaigns.
Yaffe's doctoral research examined the least known aspect of one of the 20th century’s best-known icons: the economic work of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Her research led to the book Che Guevara: the Economics of Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
She is also author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World (Yale University Press, 2020) and co-author with Professor Gavin Brown of Youth Activism and Solidarity: the Non-Stop Picket against Apartheid (2017), about the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group’s nearly four year protest outside the South African embassy in London to demand the release of political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela.
Yaffe has co-produced three documentaries on Cuba: Cuba & Covid-19: Public Health, Science and Solidarity (2020), Cuba’s Life Task: Combatting Climate Change (2021) and Cuban Bees: the Organic Revolution (2024).
Her articles regularly appear in various media outlets, including Jacobin, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian, The Conversation, Counterpunch and Green Left. Yaffe also frequently provides commentary to the mainstream media on developments in Cuba and Cuba-US relations.
