Carlos Alberto Torres

Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90024-1521

(310) 206-5791 (GSE&IS)       FAX (310) 206-6293
(310) 825-4571/72 (Latin American Center)       FAX (310) 206-6859

torres@gseisucla.edu

Carlos Alberto Torres, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, Director of the Latin American Center, is a political sociologist of education who did his undergraduate work in sociology in Argentina (B.A. honors and teaching credential in Sociology), his graduate work in Mexico (M.A. Political Science) and the United States (Master of Arts and Ph.D. in International Development Education, Stanford University), and post-doctoral studies in educational foundations in Canada (University of Alberta). He is also the Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Torres has been a Visiting Professor in universities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Portugal, and Sweden. He has lectured throughout Latin American and the United States, and in universities in England, Japan, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa.

Dr. Torres' major areas of inquiry include cognitive, social and political returns of literacy training and state policies as compensatory legitimation. His policy research focuses on issues of equality, equity and efficiency of elementary, secondary, and higher education in America. Dr. Torres' theoretical and empirical research has resulted in the development of a political sociology of education highlighted in his much-heralded book with Raymond Morrow, Social Theory and Education. He is considered one of the world's leading authorities on Latin American education, and the principal biographer of Brazilian philosopher and critical social theorist, Paulo Freire. Since his arrival in 1990, his research has brought more than two million dollars to UCLA

Dr. Torres has authored 33 books, and 132 research articles and chapters in books in several languages-- he speaks fluently Spanish and Portuguese. He has participated and presented papers and has been a keynote speaker regularly for the last twenty years in national and world congresses of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Asociacion Latinoamericana de Sociología (ALAS), Comparative International Educational Society (CIES), International Association of Comparative Education Societies, International Political Science Association (IPSA), International Sociological Association (ISA), and Latin American Studies Association (LASA). He has been Vice-President, Research Committee on Political Education, IPSA (1983-1997), Past-President, CIES (1994-1998), and he has been elected President, Research Committee on Sociology of Education, International Sociological Association (1998-2002). He is the editor of the prestigious Routledge (New York) series on Education, Social Theory and Cultural Change, and has recently been appointed Chair of the Commission on Education and Society of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences(CLACSO), a federation of elite research centers in Latin America. This position will allow Dr. Torres to set the research agenda and to influence educational policy in Latin America during the next five years.

He has served as an evaluator for the Fulbright Program, and the program for Gifted and Talented Children, Department of Education. At UCLA he has served as Assistant Dean for Students Affairs, GSE&IS, Head of the Division of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, Department of Education, Chair, Committee of Academic Personnel, Department of Education, and in the Advisory Committees of ISOP, the Chicano Studies Research Center, the Pacific Rim Center, the Latin American Studies IDP, and as ex- officio, Latin American Center. He served on the Committee for the establishment of the César Chavez Center. He is an Educational Adviser of the Argentine National Congress.

Examples of his most recent books are the following:

  • Critical Social Theory and Education: Freire, Habermas and the Dialogical Subject. (with Raymond Morrow). New York, Teachers College Press- Columbia University, in press.
  • Comparative Education: The Dialectics of the Global and the Local (with Robert Arnove, editors). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, in press.
  • Democracy, Education, and Multiculturalism: Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
  • Education, Power and Personal Biography. Dialogues with Critical Educators. New York, Routledge, 1998.
  • Education and Democracy: Paulo Freire, Social Movements, and Educational Reform in São Paulo (with Pilar O'Cadiz and Pia Wong). (Bolder, Co: Westview,1998)
  • Sociology of Education: Emerging Perspectives (with Ted Mitchell, editors). SUNY Press, Albany, New York, 1998.
  • Education in Latin America: Comparative Perspectives. (with Adriana Puiggros, editors.), Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996.
  • Social Theory and Education. A Critique of Theories of Social and Cultural Reproduction. (with Raymond Morrow). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995.