I am an economist at the LSE, back in Europe after eighteen years in the US. I study power.
Much of my research is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I co-founded Marakuja Research and spent more than fifteen years working with armed groups and state agencies.
I combine economics, history, anthropology, political science, and moral psychology.
Podcasts:
Rehumanising economics on VoxDev
One project from the inside on Backstory.
Graduation speech 2024, UChicago: “Last Lecture.”
· Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar | R.Sanchez-de-la-Sierra@lse.ac.uk ·
At LSE: Department of Management,
Governance, Environment, and Technology group. Member, Research Ethics Review Board.
Teaching and pedagogy: Political Economy of Development, Power and “Development.”
In 2024, the students at UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy voted me Outstanding Faculty of the Year and I delivered the graduation speech.
Cinema: I am the subject of Stephan Hilpert‘s award-winning documentary Congo Calling (2019). Here is a review by The Guardian.
Starting on the right foot: In Spain, people carry two surnames. Traditionally the first comes from the father and the second from the mother. In the US, people often confuse the former with a middle name. It is not.
Sánchez is the first surname, from my father, and De la Sierra the second, from my mother. It’s not noble, it just means “from the mountains” (the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain).
So, my last name (surname) is SÁNCHEZ DE LA SIERRA. And my first (given) name is just Raúl in Spanish, Raoul in French, I grew up in France.
