David Mares is a professor of political science and adjunct professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a nonresident scholar in Latin American energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Mares was previously profesor-investigador at El Colegio de México (1980-1982), Fulbright professor at the Universidad de Chile (1990), and visiting professor at the Diplomatic Academy in Ecuador (1995). He has been a visiting scholar at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; a fellow at the Japan External Trade Research Organization; a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; an associate fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue; and has held a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs. His research and teaching interests include Latin American energy politics, the political economy of drug policy, defense policy, civil-military relations, and the use of photographic imagery in politics.

Mares has published many books and articles in numerous journals in the Americas and Europe. He is editor of the series “Latin America: Social Sciences and the Law” (Routledge Press) and was a member of the international advisory board of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Civiles-Militares (Peru), as well as of the editorial board of Latin American Research Review. He has prepared reports for a number of international research institutions, and he is a fellow of the academic forum of the Summit of the Americas (Montreal, Canada) and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London) and the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1982.

Mares was an event speaker at the Dialogue.