Biography

I hold a D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Sociology from the University of Oxford, with a dissertation titled Markets and Opportunities: An Explanation of Life-chances; an M.A in Social Sciences from the Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Juan March Institute, Spain); and a B.A. in Sociology and Political Science (University of Granada, Spain). I have been a Visiting Scholar at several institutions: Duke University, European Centre for Analysis in the Social Sciences (University of Essex) and Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (Berlin), and have given seminars at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse University) and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin).
My current research interests include social stratification and the political economy of inequality. In the area of social stratification, I am working mainly on the role of wealth ownership in stratification processes. I am revising a theoretical paper on the topic, and have published a paper on the how wealth inequality is related to the different opportunities for earnings acquisition of blacks and whites in the US (“The Color of Opportunities: Assets, Earnings Mobility and the Black White Gap”, forthcoming in Social Science Research). Furthermore, I am working on a book-length manuscript on the issue.
In the area of the political economy of inequality, I am working on two projects. The first deals with the dynamics of inequality and poverty across different welfare regimes. In the second project, I am working on the political economy of redistribution, both in a methodological paper on how to measure the redistributive consequences of welfare states, and on a substantive paper on the socioeconomic and political underpinnings of redistribution.