Matias Montero Salazar

Education (2024 cohort)

My research focuses on studying the patterns of gender inequalities throughout the academic careers of Latin American researchers in the field of education. Adopting a sociological perspective grounded in cumulative disadvantage theory and life course research, I want to explore co-authorship networks using stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM), which is a family of statistical models within social network analysis, that enables the study of longitudinal network dynamics. I am also interested in understanding how higher education institutions might mitigate these gender inequalities, especially for early career researchers. This group faces important life transitions, such as family formation and the broader demands of entering academia, which can create additional challenges to pursuing an academic career in the field of education.

I have had the opportunity to participate in several research projects exploring gender inequalities at different educational stages. One of these studies, which inspired my doctoral proposal, which inspired my doctoral proposal, explored gender disparities in the education academy in Chile. We found that women’s academic trajectories showed higher attrition rates and lower productivity, leadership and collaborative networks. This study was enriched by our previous research findings on collaboration patterns among Latin American universities and its (essentially) geopolitical dimension. Both studies have been published in Higher Education and in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, respectively.

In addition, I have pursued my passion for teaching by serving as a Teaching Assistant in 15 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. I am truly committed to supporting my students’ learning in applied statistics and sociology of education, emphasising the relevance of rigorous empirical research based on educational theory, and using practical examples to highlight the relevance of addressing our current educational challenges.

I hold a BSc in Sociology (Universidad de Chile) and an MSc in Education (University of Oxford). I previously worked at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education from the Universidad de Chile, where I focused my research on educational inequalities, particularly in secondary schools and higher education, and on gender & education. My research mainly applies multilevel, latent, and social network models within a relational sociology framework.