Two Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) Scholars to Join DRCLAS for Fall 2026 Research Stays
DRCLAS is pleased to welcome two scholars from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez for short-term research stays during the Fall 2026 semester. Laura Fahrenkrog and Sebastián Gallegos, both Associate Professors at UAI, will join DRCLAS through the Harvard–UAI Collaborative Research Grant, a partnership that has strengthened academic exchange, supported innovative research, and fostered collaboration between Harvard and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez since 2016.
During their time at Harvard, Fahrenkrog and Gallegos will conduct research in Harvard’s libraries and archives, participate in workshops and academic activities across campus, and engage with faculty, students, and the broader DRCLAS community. Their visits will support ongoing research projects while creating new opportunities for scholarly exchange and collaboration between Chile and Harvard.
Laura Fahrenkrog
Fall 2026 Harvard-UAI Scholar
Laura Fahrenkrog is Associate Professor of History at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile). Her research centers on musical practices in colonial Spanish America, examining their connection to social and cultural problems, labor, and colonial categories. Her most recent book is Musical Practices and Mobility in Asunción: Indigenous Musicians in Colonial Paraguay (Lexington Books, 2025).
Her DRCLAS project focuses on studying Indigenous musicians in the Viceroyalty of Peru (16th–18th centuries) and considers three interrelated themes: identities, mobilities, and material culture. The main goal is to examine these topics in an integrated, interdisciplinary manner to better understand musical practices in the Viceroyalty of Peru as complex manifestations that involved intertwined dimensions, such as Indigenous agency and colonial labor systems.
She is the author of "De indígenas y cascabeles: aproximación a los recorridos y valoraciones de un objeto sonoro en Hispanoamérica colonial (siglos XVI-XVII)" (Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, 2025); “Music in Paraguay”, Oxford Bibliographies in Music, (Oxford University Press, 2023), and articles published in academic journals in the United States, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Spain. Her research has received support from the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo of Chile. She received the 2018 Miguel Cruchaga Tocornal Award from the Academia Chilena de la Historia for her doctoral dissertation. Her book Los "indios cantores" del Paraguay. Prácticas musicales y dinámicas de movilidad en Asunción colonial (siglos XVI-XVIII) (Sb Editorial, 2020) is the 2021 winner of the Clarence H. Haring Prize in Latin American History from the American Historical Association.
Sebastian Gallegos
Fall 2026 Harvard-UAI Scholar
Sebastian Gallegos is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Business School in Chile. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Economics at Princeton University. He previously served as Advisor to the Ministry of Education in Chile, Instructor of Economics at the Universidad de Chile, and Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C.
Gallegos’ research lies at the intersection of human capital and applied econometrics, with a focus on causal inference and policy evaluation. His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and Economics of Education Review, among others. At DRCLAS, he will conduct research on the long-term causal impacts of pursuing master’s and PhD degrees abroad, examining effects on advanced human capital, labor market outcomes, and related human capital externalities.