Professor Lisandro Pérez will be honored with the 2023 Award for Excellence in Cuba Studies by the Cuba Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) at their annual convention in May.

The prize recognizes a lifetime of scholarship that brought to life Cuban history and society, Cuban-American attitudes and identity, as well as United States policy towards Cuba.

Dr. Pérez’s forthcoming book, The House on G Street: A Cuban Family Saga, will sit alongside his other works; Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York, and The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States (with Guillermo Grenier), as well as Cuban Studies, a widely acclaimed journal he edited for five years.

Born in La Habana, Cuba, Dr. Pérez graduated from high school in Miami and later returned as a professor, founding the Cuban Studies Institute at Florida International University. He joined John Jay College in 2010 as Professor and Chair of the Department of Latin American and Latina/o Studies where he oversaw the creation of the College’s Bachelor of Arts in Latin American and Latina/o Studies. He was recently named to the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, D.C.