Gabriel Chouhy

Gabriel Chouhy is a sociologist and researcher at the Faculty of Economics, Government and Communications of the Universidad Central de Chile. D. and M.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, he also holds a diploma in sociodemographic analysis and a degree in sociology from the University of the Republic, Uruguay. Prior to joining Central University, Gabriel was a research fellow at the Institute of Education at University College London, a postdoctoral researcher in Latin American Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, and a doctoral researcher at the National Academy of Education in the United States. Before starting his graduate studies, Gabriel worked as a data analyst for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Uruguay.

Gabriel’s lines of research are framed within the studies of the new economic sociology, the sociology of markets, the sociology of experts, and comparative historical sociology. In particular, his work examines the various market devices used as an instrument of public policy, focusing on the technical and political controversies related to their design and implementation, and paying special attention to the field of education. His earlier research at UCL tests the public policy assumption that liberalization of supply in educational quasi-markets through the opening of “free schools” in England impacts favorably, via competitive pressures, on neighboring schools. In parallel, and in continuity with his doctoral work, Gabriel studies the influence of expert discourse in the processes of institutionalization and reform of high consequence rankings in Chile, a central element of the “market model” in education. A third line of research seeks to theorize the role of economists in the design and implementation of delayed acceptance algorithms as instruments for the construction of “fair” school markets, comparing the cases of Chile and New Orleans.