Simón Escoffier

Simón Escoffier is a political sociologist exploring the controversial role of collective action and social movements in current democracies. With a focus on Latin America and the use of qualitative and mixed methods, he has studied how the urban poor build the mobilizing capabilities to support large-scale protests. His research also addresses urban marginality, political clientelism, movement’s policy impact, legal mobilization, and the tactics of conservative, right-wing movements in Latin America. He is the author of the book Mobilizing at the Urban Margins: Citizenship and Patronage Politics in Post-Dictatorial Chile (2023 with Cambridge University Press) and the co-editor of the volume The Right against Rights in Latin America (2023 with Oxford University Press). He is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he teaches on political sociology, social movements, citizenship, local democracy, and qualitative research methods. Simón received his DPhil in Sociology from St Antony’s College, at the University of Oxford, and a master’s from the London School of Economics.