Maria Lorena Cook, an associate professor in the Department of Collective Bargaining, Labor Law, and Labor History, holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. Maria was drawn to the ILR School by its interdisciplinary focus, inter-national dimension, and engagement with key policy issues.

Maria’s expertise is in comparative labor law reform and industrial relations in Latin America, labor politics, democratization, and political economy in Mexico. She is also interested in regional integration and transnational social movements, and has published articles on cross-border union cooperation under NAFTA.

Born in New Mexico, Maria spent part of her childhood in a small agricultural town two hours east of Los Angeles, and part in Lima, Peru, where her father was assigned to the U.S. embassy. Her experience in Latin America, and her bilingual upbringing (her mother is Spanish), influenced her decision to study Latin American politics.

Maria found the School welcoming and supportive and its students bright and engaged. She appreciates ILR students’ strong interest in international issues, and encourages them to take classes outside the School to explore topics in greater depth.

Maria is the author of Organizing Dissent: Unions, the State, and the Democratic Teachers’ Movement in Mexico (Penn State Press, 1996). She has also co-edited two books, The Politics of Economic Restructuring: State-Society Relations and Regime Change in Mexico (1994), and Regional Integration and Industrial Relations in North America (1994) with Harry Katz, based on an international conference they organized at ILR in 1993. She is working on a book on labor law reform in Latin America in which she compares the political dynamics of recent reforms in several nations. She is also working on an article that compares the effects of transitions to democracy and economic reform on labor laws in Latin America and in Spain, South Africa, and South Korea. In the last year her research has taken her to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia.

Maria has been active on ILR and university-wide committees and has served as faculty advisor for a number of student organizations, including Students Against Sweatshops and the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations. She was a faculty mentor in the Undergraduate Minority Summer Research Exchange Program, a national program for minority students bound for graduate school. She is a member of the steering committee of the International Relations concentration and the Latin American Studies Program. She has also participated actively in professional associations. Maria serves on the NAFTA committee of the Industrial Relations Research Association and has chaired the Labor Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

Maria’s husband, Lance Compa, a lawyer specializing in international labor rights, also teaches at ILR. They live in Ithaca with their ten-year-old cat, Petiso. Maria’s step-daughters, Katie and Beth, are in college at Georgetown and NYU. Students benefit from Maria’s unique background and expertise, and ILR is fortunate to have her on the faculty.

—ILR Connections, Fall 2000