The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea specialises in the political economy of Latin America with a particular focus on Central America. His research interests centre on the determinants of income inequality and the role of social policy in reducing it.
His most recent book, The Costs of Inequality: Lessons and Warnings for the Rest of the World (Bloomsbury, 2020), was selected as one of the best books in Economics in 2020 by the Financial Times. Together with Juliana Martínez Franzoni, he is the author of Good Jobs and Social Services: How Costa Rica Achieved the Elusive Double Incorporation (Palgrave McMillan, 2013) and The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South. Actors, Ideas and Architectures (CUP, 2016). This latter book (which was also published in Spanish in 2019) explores the determinants of universal social policy in the South - the topic he continues to work on at the moment. His joint and single-authored research has also been published in international journals such as World Development, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Economy and Society, Latin American Politics and Society and Latin American Research Review.
He studied for his PhD in Economics at the New School for Social Research (New York) and previously taught at the Institute for the Study of the Americas (University of London) between 2003 and 2008. Professor Sanchez-Ancochea has been a visiting fellow at the University of Costa Rica, at FLACSO-Dominican Republic and the program Desigualdades (Berlin) and most recently at the Kellogg Institute (University of Notre Dame). He was co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Studies (2015-19), Treasurer of the Latin American Studies Association (2018-20) and director of the Latin American Centre at Oxford (2015-18).
Professor Sánchez-Ancochea collaborates frequently with the ILO, UNDP, ECLAC, Oxford Analytica and other organisations. He is currently member of the editorial boards of Oxford Development Studies (associate editor) and Journal of Development Studies as well as member of the University of Oxford’s Council.
