Sebastián Ureta is an associate professor in the sociology department at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Santiago, Chile). He trained as a sociologist, with a focus on science and technology studies. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in sociology from the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and completed his PhD in 2006 in the media and communications department at the London School of Economics (UK). Subsequently, he worked as an assistant professor at the Instituto de Sociología, Universidad Católica de Chile. From November 2007 to March 2008 he was also a British Academy visiting fellow in the sociology department at Lancaster University (UK). From May 2009 to March 2012 he was a Marie Curie International incoming fellow at the Center for Technology and Society (ZTG), Technische Universität Berlin. Currently he is developing a research project focused on the government of industrial waste in Chile, in particular the massive waste produced by the country’s booming mining industry. In March 2015 he became the PI of the Millennium Nucleus for Energy and Society Research (NUMIES), a new research group studying the interrelations between energy issues and society in Chile.
RCC Research Project: Waste Worlds: The Multiple Lives of Tailings in Contemporary Chile
Selected publications
• Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World-Class Society. Boston: MIT Press, 2015.
• “Because in Chile [Carbon] Markets Work!: Exploring an Experimental Implementation of an Emissions Trading Scheme to Deal with Industrial Air Pollution in Santiago.” Economy and Society 43, no. 2 (2014): 285–306.
• “Normalizing Transantiago: On the Challenges (and Limits) of Repairing Infrastructures.” Social Studies of Science 44, no. 3 (2014): 368–92.
• “Policy Assemblages: Proposing an Alternative Conceptual Framework to Study Public Action.” Policy Studies 35, no. 3 (2014): 303–18.
• “The Shelter That Wasn’t There: On the Politics of Coordinating Multiple Urban Assemblages in Santiago, Chile.” Urban Studies 51, no. 2 (2014): 231–46.
• “Waiting for the Barbarians: Disciplinary Devices on Metro de Santiago.” Organization 20, no. 4 (2013): 596–614.