2025-2027 Lucy Graduate Scholar
Biography
Fabián D. Maldonado is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology Department at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on democracy, social movements, and civil society organizations, with particular interest in how legal frameworks and political polarization shape democratic participation and collective action. He primarily uses social network analysis, machine learning, and survey experiments to examine both organizational and individual-level dynamics surrounding conceptions of democracy. His current work pays special attention to how alliances among social movements contribute to political polarization, particularly in the context of environmental mobilization in the United States. He is also involved in collaborative research on transnational networks of organizations and their role in constructing imagined futures to address global challenges, with a focus on the tensions between capitalism and democracy. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Sociology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Contact:
fdiazmal@nd.edu
Advisor:
Ann Mische, Associate Professor of Sociology and Peace Studies; Faculty Fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Affairs