Mr Rodolfo Benites Nieves

My research interests are equity policies, stratification and funding in higher education, technical and vocational education and training and the world of work, meritocracy and social justice. For my Ph.D. project, I am exploring the relationship between meritocracy and higher education by studying the academic experiences of working-class students in elite universities in Latin America.

My broader research interests span various disciplines, including the political participation of youth, public policy, and democratic governance.

I am a Ph.D. researcher in education (2023 -2027) and have an M.A. in Public Policy from King's College London and a B.A. in Political Science and Government from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.  

I was a visiting lecturer in "Higher Education Policy" at the Faculty of Social Sciences, a teaching assistant in "Public Administration", "Academic Research", and "Statistics for Policy Analysis" at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and a research assistant at the International Centre for University Policy Research at the Policy Institute at King's. Currently, I am a Research Assistant for the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol.

I have more than ten years of experience in public policy, governance and higher education in the public sector and international cooperation. In particular, I have been closely involved in Peru's tertiary education policies and reforms, including the 2014 Higher Education Law, the 2015 Higher Education Policy, the 2019 Optimisation of Technical and Vocational Institutes reform and the 2020 Higher and Vocational Education Policy. From 2020 to 2023, I leveraged and implemented $1.9 million in development projects on youth civic participation and democratic governance at the United Nations Development Programme.