Laurence Whitehead is an Official Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford University and Senior Fellow of the College. Next year he will chair the area and development studies committee of the University's Social Science Division. He also does graduate teaching in contemporary Latin American politics and economic policy at Oxford's Latin American Centre, and has held various appointments as a visiting scholar at universities in the USA and Latin America. Most recently he was a senior visitor at the Center for International Studies of the University of Southern California, where he served as coordinator of the 1995 'Southern California Workshop on Economic and Political Liberalization'.
In 1980-81 he was Senior Research Officer at the Latin American Program of the Wilson Center, responsible for a large scale comparative project on 'Transitions from Authoritarian Rule and Prospects for Democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe'. The fruits of that research were published in four volumes in 1986 by the Johns Hopkins University Press (Transitions from Authoritarian Rule edited by Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead).
In 1985-86 he was Acting Program Director at the Center for US-Mexico Studies, University of California, San Diego. In 1989 he was appointed joint editor of The Journal of Latin American Studies by the Cambridge University Press. He served as Chairman of Oxford University, Social Studies Faculty during 1990-1992 and has served on the General Board of the University 1997 - 2000. Since 1989 he has been co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Studies published by Cambridge University Press. He is also editor of an Oxford University Press book series, 'Studies in Democratization'. The first book in the series International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas) was published in 1996. Ten books have been published in this series so far. His latest publication is entitled Towards Democratic Viability: The Bolivian Experience (Palgrave, 2001).