Our Research Vice President, Dr. Cynthia Sanborn, and the Director of LAC, Dr. Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, met to sign this agreement, whose main purpose is to create the "Rosemary Thorp Fund" in tribute and recognition of the fruitful academic life of Professor Rosemary Thorp, who was present at the significant ceremonial act. Professor Thorp is one of the most outstanding experts on Latin American studies in the UK and, without doubt, the best British expert on the political economy of Peru during the twentieth century, a country to which she has devoted five decades of productive intellectual work.

Among the attendees were also Dr. Felipe Portocarrero, former President of Universidad del Pacífico and current visiting fellow at the LAC, Dr. Tim Powell, Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme, Dr. John Crabtree, in charge of courses on the Andean region, and Dr. Eduardo Posada, head of the History Seminar at the LAC.

The "Rosemary Thorp Fund" is intended to promote exchange and participation of professors and researchers from Universidad del Pacífico and the LAC in joint academic activities and shared research projects.

For our university it is especially significant that this fund bears the name of professor Thorp, because this recognition adds to the one granted six years ago when she was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of Universidad del Pacífico. Her remarkable career as one of the most diligent foreign researchers of the economic and social reality of Latin America is ratified with the establishment of this fund.

Professor Thorp is retired and is currently Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College. Throughout her long career she has held multiple positions and assumed various responsibilities such as the direction, on several occasions, of the LAC and the Queen Elizabeth House. She has also been a professor and advisor of the doctoral theses of several graduates of Universidad del Pacífico and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru.

Her wide and varied bibliographic production is the result of long decades dedicated to the study and research of the political economy and history of Latin America and Peru. Her most famous work regarding the economic history of our country is the classical book she wrote, co-authored with Geoffrey Bertram, “Perú: 1890-1977. Crecimiento y políticas en una economía abierta”
("Peru: 1890-1977. Growth and policies in an open economy"), published by the Publishing Fund of Universidad del Pacífico.​

By creating this fund, Universidad del Pacífico, interested in projecting its institutional presence in various international academic circles, seeks to contribute to the creation of academic links that translate into a sustained intellectual exchange together with a shared research projects exchange with the LAC of the University of Oxford.