René Canales
Research assistant
Fondecyt project No. 1250518 “Market Justice and Deservingness of Social Welfare”
Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH)
University of Chile
Hello, I’m René Canales Sellés. I am a sociologist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and hold an M.A. in Sociology from the same institution.
My research focuses on contentious politics, political attitudes, and social stratification. In particular, I study how protest and social movements shapes attitudes towards institutional change through processes of education and socialization. Methodologically, I primarily use quantitative approaches, combining observational data with causal inference strategies and survey experiments.
I currently work as a research assistant for the Fondecyt project No. 1250518 “Market Justice and Deservingness of Social Welfare”, and for the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH). Previously, I worked as a research assistant for the Social Cohesion Observatory of the Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion (COES) and the Laboratory of Social Open Science, both at the Center of Studies of Social Conflict and Social Cohesion (COES). In both individual and collaborative research, I value reproducible practices based on Git, R, and other open-source tools.
Recently, I was admitted as a PhD fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) in the CoPoDi Research Program, supported by the DAAD Graduate School Scholarship Programme (GSSP), starting in September 2026.
I was born and raised in Santiago de Chile. Outside academia, I enjoy reading, powerlifting, listening to music and attending concerts and festivals.
Recent Papers
Check my latest papers and projects in the Research section.