Martin Edwin "Mick" Andersen has been elected president for 2011 of the Midwest Association for Latin American Studies (MALAS), a more than 200-member organization that fosters an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to education and research on LatinAmerica.  

Andersen previously served as the organization's vice president.

Andersen is the author of three books on Latin American issues. In 2010 he published "Peoples of the Earth; Ethnonationalism, Democracy and the Indigenous Challenge in 'Latin' America" (Lexington Books). He is also the author of "Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the 'Dirty War" (Westview Press, 1993), which The New York Times hailed as a "tour de force." And in 2002, he published "La Policia: Pasado, Presente y Propuestas para el Futuro" (Sudamericana), a history of the Argentine police.  

Andersen holds a master's degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. and Bologna, Italy, and a second master's in American history from The Catholic University of America. Currently studying for his doctorate at Catholic, Andersen is expected to graduate in 2011 after presenting his dissertation on the late Robert C. Hill, who served as U.S. ambassador to Buenos Aires in the mid-1970s.