Alumni Profiles
Eduardo Olivares
MPIA '11
Eduardo is currently a PhD researcher of politics at the University of Manchester, UK. His research focuses on party system institutionalization among newly democratized countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Originally from Chile, Eduardo had ten years of journalism experience prior to entering IR/PS. He had worked for the main newspapers of Chile covering the financial, macroeconomic and political economy, and international trade news. He also interviewed leaders like the presidents of Chile; the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong; winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics Finn E. Kydland, Edward Prescott, and Michael Spence; Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa; and several other world, Latin American, and Chilean officials and personalities.
For his undergraduate education, Eduardo studied journalism, contemporary history, and comparative literature at the Catholic University of Chile. At IR/PS, he specialized in evaluating the political structures of Latin American and Asian countries, comparing electoral systems, and international relations with a focus on Chile, Brazil, Korea, and Japan. Eduardo actively investigated the scope of Pacific organizations such as APEC, FEALAC, and the ongoing Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He also collected data series on Chilean legislative elections for a funded academic project. His research involved the strength of the Korean political party system and Brazil's democratic consolidation.
Eduardo was the executive vice-president of the IR/PS Latin American Student Organization (LASO), where he worked to promote Latin American cultural values among IR/PS students and to educate them on the different realities coexisting in this region.
Eduardo graduated from IR/PS in 2011 and was a Dean's Fellow. He also received the 2011 Joseph Grunwald Award for the promotion of Inter-American Understanding.
