Teaching
Teaching Interests
I am eager to teach a variety of courses in the areas of comparative politics and political economy. I am also interested in teaching thematic seminars on my areas of research expertise: Political Economy of Latin America, Politics of the Global South, and Politics of Social Policy and Labour Markets. Finally, I look forward to teaching methodological courses, such as research design, introduction to statistics, qualitative and mixed methods, and R programming for social sciences.
Teaching Experience
I have experience teaching at the undergraduate and post-graduate (MSc) levels across a range of topics in Political Science, including the core modules in Comparative Politics (Oxford, UNC-Chapel Hill) and Introduction to Political Science (LSE) as well as courses in my area of research expertise, Latin American Politics (Oxford, UNC-Chapel Hill).
Politics in Latin America, University of Oxford (course convener)
This course focuses on the politics of the major states of Latin America and the current challenges – economic, social and political - to their democratic governments. It is aimed at students with no prior knowledge of the area, but a desire to understand how Latin American societies and governments are organized and what major problems these societies face. Throughout the semester, students incorporate conceptual tools that allow them to understand both the common trends and the diverse paths followed by countries in the region, focusing on democratic consolidation and economic development.
Issues in the Political Economy of Latin America (course convener)
This course focuses on key political economy issues confronting Latin American countries in the post-market reform period. It is primarily designed for students enrolled in the MSc or MPhil in Latin American Studies and expands the Latin American Centre’s course offerings in contemporary politics and development. The course provides a comprehensive overview of how politics and economics interact in the region today, offering students essential background to understand the obstacles to development and the central dilemmas faced by policymakers. While the course does not assume prior knowledge of political economy, students are encouraged to take Introduction to Latin American Economies either beforehand or concurrently to support their understanding/details>Syllabus Issues in PolEco in LA
Introduction to Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science (class teacher)
The course is an introduction to politics in a globalised world, with a focus on how political science tries to understand and explain cross-country and cross-time differences. It introduces students to some of the main empirical variations in political behaviour, political institutions, and outcomes across the world, focusing mainly on democratic and partially democratic countries (in both the developed and developing world), and acquainting students with some of the basic theoretical ideas and research methods in political science.
International Relations and World Politics, UNC-Chapel Hill (primary instructor)
This course introduces students to the core topics in international relations with a focus on understanding international organizations and the functioning of the international economy.
Contemporary Latin American Politics, UNC-Chapel Hill (primary instructor)
This course provides an introduction to the study of Latin American politics. It is aimed at students with no prior knowledge of the area, but a desire to understand how Latin American societies and governments are organized and what major problems these societies face. The course focuses particularly on two interrelated issues: democratic consolidation and economic development.
Introduction to Comparative Politics, UNC-Chapel Hill (teaching assistant)
This course provides an introduction to the important themes of comparative political analysis, one of the four subfields of political science. It is designed to help students understand the building blocks of government and explore the political, social and economic phenomena that shape societies around the world.
Organizational History of Unionism in Argentina, Universidad de Buenos Aires (co-primary instructor)
The objective of this course is to present a political economy approach to the history of labour unionism in Argentina. The six units of the course present an overview of the six historical stages of development of the labour movement in the country, with a focus on the literature that analyses and explains the origins and evolution of organizational features at the movement, sector and firm level.
Introduction to Political Science, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (teaching assistant)
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the main issues related to the political organization of modern societies and their central political processes. The course is organized around the systematic analysis of the main institutions that structure political life in the contemporary world.
Teaching Philosophy
My approach to teaching undergraduate classes focuses on developing classroom practices to achieve three main goals: the creation and incorporation of knowledge on the specific subject of the course, the development of learning skills that are transferable to other subjects and learning environments, and inculcating other skills that are essential for most professional practices, but also for any form of civic engagement, such as disposition for teamwork, collaborative problem solving and the capacity to engage in public speech.
I structure my courses so that students understand the subject critically instead of concentrating on accumulating information. Alongside expanding students’ conceptual world, I also provide opportunities for them to actively apply these concepts to empirical material to strengthen their hold on the central heuristic tools of the course while contributing to forging their ability to critically apply them to understand real political phenomena.
I always reserve a time slot every week for in-class discussions, for which I ask each student to lead the discussion at least once during the semester by submitting questions intended to guide the interventions of their peers. I regard this as central for the development of general skills required by most social science curricula, particularly the critical analysis of different types of sources (books, articles, written press, my interventions, and other relevant materials) and the capacity to speak in public, but also for understanding and appreciating the diversity of opinions and backgrounds that emerges during discussion.
This also allows me to incorporate student feedback about the course to assess the progress of the class in incorporating course materials and the development of the desired expertise. I also include a mid-term anonymous evaluation for this end, which I have found to be useful for engaging students in the design of the course and providing them with a chance to contribute to an improvement of my teaching that directly serves them (as opposed to end-of-the-course evaluations that only benefit future cohorts).
I specifically encourage students to take advantage of the different instances of participation to ask clarifying questions or point to issues that are particularly hard to grasp. Especially in the case of historically underrepresented groups and first-generation students, which may lack the practice or external support of experienced family members, the constant evaluation of performance can be daunting at first and conspires against developing learning skills. I firmly believe that certainty, the lack of questions, is the enemy of knowledge, and students should always be encouraged to push themselves to try to understand complex and challenging problems with an open mind.
During the second part of my courses, students also develop their capacity for teamwork, collaborative problem solving, and public speech skills, besides gaining specialised knowledge on specific topics or countries. I usually provide a set of cases or issues that students can choose from to develop a project in small groups that they must present to the rest of the class at some point in the last part of the course. This activity is intended to combine many of the course’s objectives: applying analytical tools to empirical issues, written and oral presentation skills, and collaborative problem-solving.