maría josé fuentes-vásquez

I I am an Assistant Professor at the Dept. d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

I hold a PhD in Economic History from the Universitat de Barcelona (2021), with a dissertation entitled “The Rise of Mass Education in Colombia in the First Half of the Twentieth Century”.My early research combined archival and statistical evidence to analyse the relationship between education, regional inequality, and state-building in Latin America. Recently, I have been working on new areas of knowledge such as gender analysis in Latin America during the colonial period. I am also a member of WELAC – Women in Economics Latin America and the Caribbean (since April 2025). 

During my postdoctoral stays at Wageningen University & Research and the Universitat de València, I developed an independent research agenda at the intersection of gender and long-run economic development in colonial Latin America. This agenda explores women's economic agency, labour, and miscegenation as drivers of colonial economic dynamics — work that is now at the centre of my research profile, as reflected in my current working papers "Beyond the Homo Economicus: Female Economic Agency in Colonial Hispanic America" and "Free of all Colors: The Emergence of the Mixed-Race Population as the Engine of the Colonial Latin American Economy".

My research combines quantitative methods, archival sources, and a gender perspective to address long-term questions of development and inequality in Latin America and Europe.

Feel free to contact me at mariajose.fuentes@uab.cat.