Alberto Arribas Lozano

I am currently based in Peru as a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Irish Research Council COFUND Fellowship Programme CAROLINE, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713279).

This is a 3-year international/interdisciplinary/intersectoral fellowship program (June 2018 – May 2021). For the first 2 years, I will be based in a civil society organization in Peru, the Andean Project of Peasant Technologies (Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas - PRATEC). During the 3rd year I will return to the Sociology Department at Maynooth University.

My project focuses on epistemic decolonization and indigenous knowledge systems. I explore the ways in which the Buen Vivir (‘good living’) paradigm is being integrated into teaching, learning and research processes in Intercultural Higher Education Institutions across the Andean region. How is Buen Vivir translated into pedagogical approaches, curricula, teaching materials, forms of assessment, research methodologies and so forth? What models are being put into practice, and what possibilities, challenges and limitations do they face?  

RECENT POSITIONS:

- Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Research and Social Justice at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (2015-2017).

- Associate Researcher: Procesos emergentes y agencias del común: praxis de la investigación social colaborativa y nuevas formas de subjetivación política / Collaborative Research in Social Science and New Political Subjectivities (2015-2018). Project funded by the Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, Ref.: CSO2014-56960-P. 

QUALIFICATIONS:

Ph.D., Applied Social Sciences, University of Granada, Spain (2014).

MA in Migration and Development Studies (University of Granada, Spain); MA in Culture and Colonialism (National University of Ireland, Galway); BA in Political Science and Sociology, with specialization in Sociology (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain).  

PhD Dissertation: Formas de Hacer. Experimentación y Prácticas Emergentes en los Movimientos Sociales. Una Etnografía de las Oficinas de Derechos Sociales [available in Spanish at: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/34050]. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork within activist networks in Spain, my research explored the emergent logics and practices of collective action. I analysed the ways in which social movement participants reflexively produced and put to work new narratives, forms of organization, and repertoires of action and mobilization. Why and how do activists, within particular fields of intentions and constraints, transform their political imaginaries and practices? How does our research subjects' reflexivity affect the ethnographic encounter in epistemic and methodological terms? I conducted my research between 2008-2012 with the Network of Offices for Social Rights, which promoted grassroots self-organization against precarity. Methodologically, my project gradually became ‘collaborative’ during its implementation, transforming fieldwork into a space of co-analysis and co-theorization with the research subjects.  

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:

- Research Fellow (2009-2011). Project: Diversity and the European Public Sphere: Towards a Citizens’ Europe - EUROSPHERE . Funded by the EU’s 6th Framework Programme - FP6, Ref.: CIT4-CT-2006-028504. The project included universities and research centres from 16 European countries. Besides undertaking data collection activities and comparative analysis, I was co-leader of the Work-package ‘The Roles of SMOs/NGOs in the Articulation of the European Public Sphere’; and member of WPs: ‘Evaluation of the EU policies about Diversity and the European demos’, and ‘Gender, Intersectionality, and the European Public Sphere’.

- Research Fellow (2010-2012). Project: Etnografiando Prácticas de Resistencia. Escenarios, Eventos y Narrativas en la Construcción de Ciudadanía - Places, events and narratives in building citizenship. Funded by the Spanish National Scientific Research Plan, Ref.: FEM2009-10982. 

- Research Fellow (2009-2011). Project: Dialogues Between Social Sciences and Social Movements. Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ref.: CSO-2009-07790-E. Within this project, I co-coordinated the International Conference ‘Dialogues between Social Sciences and Social Movements’, with the participation of academics and activists from Brazil, United States, Portugal, Scotland, Argentina and Spain (2010); and the International Seminar ‘Culture, Globalization and Political Economy’ (2009).  

OTHER:

I have a developing record of high quality publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters; as well as a relevant record of public presentations in national and international scientific conferences and seminars. I have been accredited as Assistant Professor for Teaching and Research in Higher Education by the Spanish Agency for Evaluation, Quality and Certification (ANECA).

Between 1997 and 2004, I developed my professional career outside academia, working in Popular and Non-Formal Education projects with community groups and other civil society organizations, adult literacy centres, and secondary schools.