Pedro Mendes Loureiro

Pedro Mendes Loureiro is the Director of the Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). Primarily a political economist, at the heart of his work is a commitment to interdisciplinarity and methodological pluralism, with interests ranging wide across the social sciences. Substantively, Pedro is a scholar of inequality and of development strategies, with the ultimate goal of helping combat social inequalities in all their forms and wherever they might arise. 

He has researched and published on the political economy of development strategies in Latin America; on the changing dynamics of race, class and gender inequality; on social policies and their politics; on inequality measurement; and on the history of Latin American social thought. Pedro also collaborates with development agencies and NGOs in devising frameworks and policies to tackle multidimensional inequalities. 

Pedro's current research focusses on the expansion of the prison system and the political economy of incarceration in Brazil. It is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.