Professor of History Diego Armus recently received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina, the fifth oldest university in the Americas.

“This kind of news always takes you by surprise,” says Armus, who teaches Latin American history with an emphasis on urban and socio-cultural issues at Swarthmore. “But receiving an honorary degree from this institution is no doubt fulfilling."

Founded in 1613, The Universidad Nacional de Córdoba has a strong tradition with many of the topics on which Armus has been working since coming to the U.S. — particularly the social and cultural history of diseases and health and medicine in modern Latin America, he says.

The university’s honorary degrees committee cited Armus’ scholarly contributions to a rapidly expanding field and his efforts to build dialogue with disciplines ranging from biomedicine and public health to anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. The committee also recognized his commitment to bridge the North American and Latin American academic worlds, facilitating the circulation of knowledge and expertise.

Although Armus’ academic life is based in the U.S., he has closely collaborated with many other academic environments over the last decade, mainly in Europe and Latin American. In his home country of Argentina, he lectures, supervises doctoral students, and teaches intensive graduate seminars. In recent years, he has received two honors from the Argentine Ministry of Sciences.

Armus joined the College’s faculty in 2001. He is the editor of Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS (2003) as well as a number of other books in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.