From December 1st 2025 to December 1st 2026, I am visiting the LSE Department of Management.
Research: My research seeks to explore micro-foundations of power, and how power shapes economic and human development. I combine the tools of applied economics with history, anthropology, political science, and moral psychology. Much of my research has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I co-founded Marakuja Research and built partnerships that allow me to study armed organizations through the traces they leave and from their inside, including the state itself. My projects start with ethnography, and often use real-time data collection, randomized interventions, or historical reconstruction. Listen here to Podcast.
Teaching: Political Economy of Development (PhD), Power and “Development“ (Master).
Cinema: In 2019, I was featured in award-winning documentary Congo Calling (The Guardian) directed by Stephan Hilpert.
Pedagogy: In 2024, was voted the Outstanding Faculty of the Year by Harris students. I was also voted by the students to deliver the school’s Last Lecture. Read it here: Last Lecture.
Photo: Northern Iberia. If you face a wall, you climb.
Topoetymology: Sánchez is not a middle name.
My first (given) name is Raúl in Spanish, Raoul in French. It ultimately derives from a Germanic name meaning “counsel” and “wolf.”
My last name (surname) is SÁNCHEZ DE LA SIERRA. In Spain, naming conventions follow a two-surname system: people carry two surnames, traditionally the first inherited from the father and the second from the mother. Sánchez is my first surname, inherited from my father. It means descendant of Sancho, derived from Sanctius, meaning “socially sanctioned” or “morally respected.” It is not a title, and its origin is neither noble nor theological, relax. De la Sierra is my second surname, inherited from my mother. It’s not noble either. It just means “from the mountains.”
The mountains of northern Spain are where I’m from (not just “originally from”). In our family, the name De la Sierra traces to the area of Meruelo and of Arnuero, in eastern Cantabria, at least as far back as the 1700s, though it could originate anywhere in the Cantabrian system, including the Picos de Europa. Historically, the area around Arnuero was a rural agro-pastoral zone, centered on cattle raising, smallholder farming, and communal land use. Arnuero itself likely derives from the ancient arn- root of Atlantic Europe, associated with water and rugged land and often attributed to early Celtic or pre-Celtic substrates in northern Iberia.
De la Sierras used to live in the smaller house to the right at the turn of the previous century and until recently:
Raúl SÁNCHEZ DE LA SIERRA 