1. UCA
Centro de Análisis Socio Cultural (CASC)
Managua, June 24, 2006
Att: The person concerned
Regarding: Ms. Malene Nissen Daza
I have had the pleasure of working with Malene during the more than 3 years she has
been functioning as a colleague researcher under my Direction.
Malene has been posted in Managua as a development worker for the Danish
Association for International Co-operation in Central America, MS-CA, between
2003 and 2006, and during the whole period she has been working with us at the
Centro de Análisis Sociocultural, a research unity which is part of the UCA
(Universidad Centroamericana) of Nicaragua.
Malene has been a key player in several mayor research projects undertaken by the
Centre.
First and foremost, she has done a great amount of work in terms of organising,
describing, analysing and interpreting a huge amount of complex qualitative and
quantitative data addressing perceptions and issues related to regional autonomy in
Latin America, in general, and in Nicaragua, in particular. This work has served as
important input from our Centre to two mayor projects founded by the European
Union (LatAutonomy Project, 2001-2004) and the UNDP (Human Development
Rapport of the Autonomous Regions of Nicaragua, 2005). And Malene has published
a synthesis of both these and other CASC studies as volumes of the UCA research
paper collection, at the service of the student community.
Furthermore, Malene has been a competent help as an ad hoc counterpart in terms of
research related input and organisational arrangements in connexion with a wide
range of studies, projects and post graduate courses undertaken by CASC-UCA
during these past years. These efforts have been centred mainly within the fields of
Rotonda Rubén Darío, 150 metros al Oeste. Apartado Postal No. C‐51,
Managua, Nicaragua. Teléfono directo No. (505) 2785590. Fax No. (505) 2670106
casc‐uca@ns.uca.edu.ni

2. UCA
Centro de Análisis Socio Cultural (CASC)
local development, participation in democracy, gender identities and paternal roles,
as well as local political culture.
At last but not least, Malene has facilitated numerous and valuable input to the Centre
in terms of describing and institutionalizing research methods and -tools, co-
operational structures, as well as in helping communicating research results.
As a researcher, Malene has shown great methodological competence and local
socio-cultural insight, even if her prior research experience was limited to the field
works and studies she has carried out in connexion with her bachelor and masters
degree.
For all the above counts that Malene has enjoyed a great amount of independence and
freedom of methodology and prioritizing within the projects she has been involved
in. This has been a necessary condition for our co-operation, as the resource situation
of the Centre obliges each researcher to be highly independent in the different phases
of each project. Malene has shown capable of working under these conditions
alongside with the rest of the team, steadily assimilating the methodology, standards,
level of detail, and scientific discourse practised from the Centre in connexion with
each type of study. In some cases she has even innovated our ways of working. It has
therefore been rewarding to work with her.
Malene is both systematic and creative in her methodological approach, and
alongside with her great Spanish proficiency and increasing understanding of the
Nicaraguan and Latin American realities, she has been able to take very complex data
and a very detail-oriented and descriptive approach to a fine level of analysis and
abstraction, which has not required much final reviewing. Furthermore, she has
integrated a huge number of references in her work, hereby situating our research
results in a broader regional and international perspective in terms of scientific
scholars.
As such, Malene has been a competent colleague and researcher, and we even
sometimes seemed to forget she is a foreigner and even recently graduated.
I therefore give her my very best recommendations.
Rotonda Rubén Darío, 150 metros al Oeste. Apartado Postal No. C‐51,
Managua, Nicaragua. Teléfono directo No. (505) 2785590. Fax No. (505) 2670106
casc‐uca@ns.uca.edu.ni

3. UCA
Centro de Análisis Socio Cultural (CASC)
I would love to see her continue working within social science research, and
hopefully follow up on the work she has carried out within the particular fields of
study in which she has gained and developed valuable knowledge for our Centre and
country.
Yours sincerely,
Manuel Ortega Hegg
Director
Centro de Análisis Sociocultural
Universidad Centroamericana
Rotonda Rubén Darío, 150 metros al Oeste. Apartado Postal No. C‐51,
Managua, Nicaragua. Teléfono directo No. (505) 2785590. Fax No. (505) 2670106
casc‐uca@ns.uca.edu.ni