About

About me


I am a Ramón y Cajal Research-Professor at the Department of Sociology II of the National University of Distance Education (UNED) in Madrid.

I am also co-convenor of the hub “New Patterns of Mobilization for- and against- Democracy“, a joint effort of OSUN Forum on Democracy and Development by the Central European University (CEU) Democracy Institute in Budapest and the University of Los Andes in Bogota.

Currently on leave as a Senior Research-Professor at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the National University of San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires.

I have recently completed a Humboldt Senior Fellowship at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, a Master in Research and a Doctoral degree in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy.

I am currently working on the political economy of social movements, the analysis of strategies of social movements inside and outside parliaments, and a comparative analysis of protests in capital cities. My research interests focus on the relational and historical analysis of strategy making, theorizing the nexus between the pace of long-term historical processes and the strategies and expectations of the actors involved in the dynamics of social change.

In my book The Poor’s Struggle for Political Incorporation (Cambridge University Press) I propose a theory for analyzing the popular sectors’ quest for incorporation as citizens and wage-earners. This book opened a new debate on the analysis of the political economy of Latin America, originating the co-edited volume Reshaping the Political Arena in Latin America: From Resisting Neoliberalism to the Second Incorporation (University of Pittsburgh Press) to further apply my thesis of the second wave of incorporation in Latin America.

In addition, I am the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements (Oxford University Press), and I co-edited Social Movement Dynamics: New Perspectives on Theory and Research from Latin America (Routledge). Both volumes provide the most complete review of the Latin American production on social movement studies.

In Spanish, I am the author of Democracia y movimientos sociales (Instituto Nacional Electoral), and regarding youth political participation, I wrote La participación de las juventudes hoy: la condición juvenil y la redefinición del involucramiento político y social (Prometeo Editorial).

My work has been published in Arabic, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Spanish and English, and in journals such as International Political Science Review, International Sociology, Third World Quarterly, Social Movement Studies, Mobilization, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Latin American Politics and Society, Latin American Perspectives, Bulletin of Latin American Research, among others.

I am advisory editor of The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Wiley, 2nd edition), contributing editor of Mobilizing Ideas (Center for the Study of Social Movements, University of Notre Dame, USA) and a member of the academic committee of the Master in Politics and Government of the National University of San Martín, Buenos Aires and the Project MOBILISE. Previously, I served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Participation and Mobilization Standing Group of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and participated at Brown University’s International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI).

I have been Visiting Professor at the Centre on Social Movement Studies of the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), Queen Mary University of London, the American University in Cairo, Singapore Management University and the Università degli studi di Pisa, Visiting Scholar at New York University and the Universidade de Brasília, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence) and the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University (New Orleans).

I was invited to give guest lectures on social movements, Latin American politics, strategic analysis and comparative historical analysis in all continents: the WZB in Berlin, the London School of Economics (LSE), Sciences Po (Paris), the University of Glasgow, the Universidad de Salamanca, Newcastle University, Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), the Università degli studi di Trento, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Göteborgs universitet, Brown University, the University of Pittsburgh, Tulane University, the American University in Cairo, Western Cape University, Singapore Management University, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, among others.

As an expert I have been interviewed by different media outlets and have given speeches at the Commission for Social Development of the United Nations (New York), the Euro-Latin American Assembly of the European Parliament (Brussels), the Panel of Eminent Persons on Civil Society and United Nations Relationships – Latin American Regional Consultation Meeting (Rio de Janeiro), the National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico and the Students’ Forum 2000 (Prague), among others.

Prior to my work in academia I worked with Oxfam Australia, the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations, Vientos del Sur NGO, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Information Center for Argentina and Uruguay, among others.

I am fluent in four languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English.

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Contact information

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología
Departamento de Sociología II
Calle Trejo 2, Madrid 28040
Spain

Poster by art collective Prensa la Libertad in Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires, 2020