María Balarin Bonazzi
Senior Researcher
PhD in Educational Policy - University of Bath
mbalarin@grade.org.pe
María Balarin is a Senior Researcher at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Peru.
Her research explores the political economy of education reform and educational justice in the Global South, with a particular focus on gender dynamics and socioeconomic exclusion. She has examined how state weakness shapes education reforms, the processes of weakly regulated school privatization and their effects on socioeconomic segregation, as well as the educational, labor market, and citizenship trajectories of marginalized young people. Her work has also addressed the educational inclusion of migrants and the role of education in advancing social justice.
María has contributed to the evaluation of education policies and programs, and has led studies and projects on gender inequality in academia and on the constraints facing social research in middle- and low-income countries.
She holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of Bath (UK), an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Essex (UK), and a BA in Philosophy from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Before joining GRADE, she was a faculty member in the Department of Education at the University of Bath.
Publications
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Bringing peacebuilding to nexus thinking in education in emergencies: promising practices to overcome injustices
2023 Julia Paulson, Kelsey Shanks, Bassel Akar, Emraan Azad, Maria Balarin, Vasila Bozichaeva, Jennifer Emelife, María Fernanda Rodríguez
This synthesis report was commissioned by INEE, UNESCO and IFRC through the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies (EiE Hub). These partners recognise that education in emergencies and protracted crises must be recognised as a cornerstone of humanitarian, peace and development action – not as secondary to sectoral responses – and that this requires action across […]
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Reforming education in the context of weak states: the political economy of education reforms in Peru 1995-2020
2023 Maria Balarin, Mauricio Saavedra
In this paper, we explore the political economy of education reforms in Peru through an analysis of the recent history of education policies in the country. Starting in 1995, arguably the inception point for quality-oriented reforms, we follow policy developments in three selected areas – curriculum, teachers and assessment – up to 2020, the year […]
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Chapter in BookEl Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar
Los caminos de la exclusión: las transiciones hacia la vida adulta entre jóvenes urbanos vulnerables
2022 Lorena Alcazar, Maria Balarin
This essay details the transitions to adulthood experienced by vulnerable urban youth. This is the most important transition towards productivity improvements, as young people should begin to apply the learning gained from their human capital investments in the labor market. However, one phenomenon limiting this realization is the high proportion of young ninis: neither studying […]
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El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar
2022 Maria Balarin, Santiago Cueto, Ricardo Fort
The essays that make up this book have been written to commemorate the first 40 years of GRADE’s institutional life, which coincides not only with the Bicentennial of Peru’s Independence, but also with the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its profound economic, social and political consequences. From different conceptual and methodological perspectives, […]
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Chapter in BookLa mejora sistémica de la educación
Paradojas de la mejora educativa en los niveles subnacionales de gobierno: los casos de San Martín y Ayacucho
2021 Maria Balarin
En Perú, María Balarin analiza dos casos muy disímiles. Por un lado, San Martín fue el único caso seleccionado en el que no hubo mejoras por encima del país, pero fue elegido ante la falta de casos de mejora porque los expertos consultados destacaron su planificación, articulación y calidad de gestión en un contexto muy […]
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La trayectoria reciente y situación actual de la educación privada en el Perú
2017 Maria Balarin
Como mostraremos a lo largo del documento, el sector privado de la educación es hoy en día en extremo diverso. En él coexisten instituciones educativas de alta calidad con otras de calidad dudosa, muchas de las cuales operan en situación de informalidad. Del mismo modo, los resultados alcanzados por el sector privado de la educación […]
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Impacts of the Peruvian conditional cash transfer program on women empowerment: a quantitative and qualitative approach
2016 Lorena Alcazar, Maria Balarin, Karen Espinoza
This study aims to identify the effects of the conditional cash transfer program of Peru, Juntos, on women’s empowerment. Although the program does not envisage women’s welfare as an objective per se, women play a key role as they are the main recipients of the cash transfer and are responsible for compliance with the program’s conditions and thus […]
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Evaluación del proceso de implementación de la intervención de soporte pedagógico del Ministerio de Educación del Perú
2016 Maria Balarin
Este informe presenta los resultados de la evaluación del Proceso de implementación de la intervención de Soporte Pedagógico que el Ministerio de Educación del Perú viene desarrollando en las escuelas públicas polidocentes completas de educación primaria en áreas urbanas. La evaluación de procesos se llevó a cabo entre los meses de julio de 2015 y […]
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The dynamics of social research production, circulation and use in Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru: a comparative study
2016 Maria Balarin, Fernando Masi, Miguel Vera, Ignacio González, Belén Servín, Natalia Péres
The paper presents the results of a comparative study of the social research production environments of three Latin-American, low- and middle-income countries: Bolivia, Paraguay and Perú. It draws from three case studies – one of each country – based on in-depth interviews with key informants (policymakers, researchers, leaders of higher education and research institutions) conducted […]
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The default privatization of peruvian education and the rise of low-fee private schools: better or worse opportunities for the poor?
2015 Maria Balarin
The study on which this paper is based set out to explore what was happening in the lowfee private schooling sector in Perú—a growing and un-explored area of public education in the country and in many parts of the developing world—and, more specifi cally, at how parents from poor backgrounds make decisions and navigate the […]
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JournalGlobalization, Societies and Education
Global citizenship and marginalization: contributions towards a political economy of global citizenship
2011 Maria Balarin
This paper provides a critical discussion of the literature on global citizenship education using a theorical approach that sterms form political economy theories of globalisation.
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JournalCompare: a Journal of Comparative and International Education
Curriculum reform and the displacement of knowledge in Peruvian rural secondary schools: exploring the unintended local consequences of global education policies
2010 Martín Benavides, Maria Balarin
The processes of policy implementation in developing contexts and the unintended consequences of education policies that follow international policy scripts without enough consideration of local histories and cultures.
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JournalPrimary Review Research Survey
The governance, administration and control of primary education
2008 Maria Balarin, Hugh Lauder
In this report a detailed description of the current state of educational governance, administration and control will be presented.
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JournalPolicy Futures in Education
The Right to Knowledge and the Right to Philosophy
2008 Maria Balarin
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JournalPolicy Futures in Education
Post-structuralism, realism and the question of knowledge in educational sociology: a Derridian critique of social realism in education
2008 Maria Balarin
This article engages with a current debate in the sociology of educational knowledge which seeks to dispel the alleged relativism of social constructivist influences in education.
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El entorno de la investigación social en el Perú
Desigualdad en la academia: mujeres en las ciencias sociales2018 Lorena Alcazar, Maria Balarin, Aurora Escudero
In Peru there are important coincidences with the findings of this literature, but there are also particularities that can be explained by what we can describe as the precarious environment in which academic research is developed in the country, an environment that deepens some gender inequalities that are also raised in this book.
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¿Cómo abordar el estudio de las inequidades de género en el mundo académico?
Desigualdad en la academia: mujeres en las ciencias sociales2018 Lorena Alcazar, Maria Balarin
This first chapter seeks to situate readers of this book in this shared conceptual approach to the problem of gender inequalities in academia. To this, we present a brief discussion of how we approach regimes of inequality in academia and research, and the main contributions of the international literature on how differences between women and […]
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El contexto importa: reflexiones acerca de cómo los contextos y la composición escolar afectan el rendimiento y la experiencia educativa de los estudiantes
Investigación para el desarrollo en el Perú: once balances2016 Maria Balarin
The starting point for this assessment is the idea that in complex systems such as education, results are the product of dynamic interactions between actors, policies, and contexts—cultural, social, and institutional. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce results to a single, specific, replicable set of facts. The assessment seeks to delve into this idea by […]
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Las mujeres en las Ciencias Sociales: reflexiones sobre el contexto peruano a partir de una revisión de la literatura internacional
Bajo el radar de Sofía: oportunidades y barreras de las profesionales en el Perú2014 Maria Balarin
Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.
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Laclau’s theory of hegemony: between socio-cultural politics and a political economy of citizenship
Peru in theory2014 Maria Balarin
Can ‘theory’ teach us anything about Peru? Can ‘Peru’ teach us anything about theory? The chapters in this volume explore these questions by establishing a productive dialogue between Peru and theory. Focusing on institutional weakness and economic, social, gendered, racialized, and other forms of exclusion – key issues in recent social scientific inquiry in Peru […]
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Projects
Media
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Six in 10 private schools are low-cost and mostly of subsistence
August 11, 2017 Education and learning, State reform and public institutions
What is the situation of private education in Peru? The newspaper Gestión highlighted some of the topics discussed in the presentation of the study by our senior researchers, María Balarin and Hugo Ñopo, on the functioning of the market of educational services in our country [Video and wrap-up of the presentation here].
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María Balarin: “We found a plain scenario of underrepresentation of women in the academic and research fields”
July 18, 2017
If women produce as much as their male peers, why do they earn and scale less? In the blog Saber es Poder (Knowledge is Power) of La Mula, María Balarin, senior researcher at GRADE and member of Grupo Sofía, talks with Enrique Mendizábal, founder of On Think Tanks, on the contextual and institutional barriers behind a […]
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María Balarin: Why is the presence of women so relevant in the production of knowledge?
July 13, 2017 Ethnicity, gender and citizenship
Why is so relevant the presence of women in the production of knowledge? Due to a lost of talent issue and also because the perspectives are different. Having more women involves different approaches of the same problem, but also allows the identification of new problems. This topic was discussed by María Balarín, senior researcher at GRADE and member of […]
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María Balarin discusses on the unique university model promoted by the university reform law
January 4, 2017 Education and learning
“The (university) law takes over a homogeneus model of university, for which all institutions are aim to do the same”. María Balarín, senior researcher at GRADE, discussed on the challenges to university reform, including setting up a unique model. In this sense, Balarín argued that, with the massification of higher education, “there are relevant processes of institutional differentiation, […]
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María Balarin joined GDN webinar on funding for social science research
August 2, 2016 Methodologies for research and evaluation of policy and programmes
“In many development countries, the discourses and practices of evidence-based policy-making, as well as the discourses regarding the importance of increasing the production of publishable research do seem to be taken hold, but there is little reflection on the need to develop the capacities of the research community, on what this means and how this […]
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Presentations
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The ungoverned education market and the deepening of socioeconomic school segregation in Peru
Ciudad de México, 26 March, 2018
Presentación en la 62° Conferencia Anual de la Sociedad de Educación Comparada e Internacional CIES 2018.
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Mercado privado, consecuencias públicas: un estudio sobre el funcionamiento de los mercados de servicios educativos en el Perú
Auditorio de GRADE, 10 August, 2017
Presentación de resultados iniciales, como parte de las actividades de incidencia del estudio TTI-GRADE.
Selected Publications
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Education as and for Justice in the Global South Case Studies from Nepal, Perú and Uganda
2025 Lizzi O. Milligan, Maria Balarin, Rachel Wilder, Expedito Nuwategeka, Mohan Paudel
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