University Lecturer in Development Studies

Academic Profile

I am a University Lecturer in Development Studies at Leiden University. I was trained as an economist and hold a PhD in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

  • My work brings together political economy with interdisciplinary approaches to social policy, inequality, and citizenship. I focus on Latin America while engaging broader global questions on social stratification, digital infrastructures, and inequality.
  • I am particularly interested in how welfare systems, labour markets, fiscal regimes, and digital and security infrastructures produce differentiated forms of inclusion and exclusion, and how these processes are lived and experienced in everyday life.

Education

I completed my PhD in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

  • I also hold an MA in Development Studies, an MA in Non-Profit Organisations and Social Economy, and a BA in Economics.

Selected Publications

My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including:

  • Rethinking social assistance amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Guaranteeing the right to income security in Ecuador (Journal of International Development, 2024)
  • Falling through the cracks: Digital infrastructures of social protection in Ecuador (Development and Change, 2021)
  • Institutionalising segregation: Women, conditional cash transfers, and paid employment in southern Ecuador (Population and Development Review, 2019)
  • Inequality and the socioeconomic dimensions of mobility in protests: The cases of Quito and Santiago (Global Policy, 2021)

Books and Editorial Work

  • I am coeditor of Política social, pobreza y desigualdad en el Ecuador 1980–2021.

  • In addition, I contribute to the Handbook of Social Policy in Latin America (forthcoming).

  • I am also co-editing the forthcoming volume, Social Policy and the (Re)making of Citizenship in Latin America: Intersecting Differences.

My recent and ongoing projects include:

  • (Re)constructing Citizenship through Social Policy: Diversity in Latin America
  • Mapping (In)Security: Participatory Digital Cartographies of Urban Safety in Europe
  • Proximity as Method: Teaching Innovation in Ethnographic and Decolonial Approaches
  • Unsetting Hierarchies and Binaries
  • Social Policy, Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador: Long-Term Transformations

Work in progress

I am currently working on the following research projects:

  • Work, poverty and perceptions: Objective and subjective dimensions of in-work poverty in Ecuador
  • (Contra)resistances to the extractive imperative in contemporary Ecuador
  • Ontological security and the political economy of insecurity: authoritarian neoliberalism, securitisation, and territorial control
  • Curated spectacle and the platformisation of political conflict: perception, attention, and digital infrastructures

Policy engagement

Alongside my academic work, I contribute to public debate through policy briefs, essays, and media commentary on social policy, inequality, and economic processes shaping social stratification. I have published in public platforms and provided expert commentary for Dutch and international media.