Congratulations to Chiara Puglisi and Mar Cañizares, from the Department of Political and Social Sciences, for receiving their doctorates on 17 March 2023, after an unanimous decision from the Jury.
Puglisi defended her thesis titled Beyond the mother-child dyad: three studies on the role of "others" in improving child wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Cañizares defended her thesis on Selection or moderation?: Three essays on educational inequalities.
Chiara Puglisi's thesis on child health and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa extends the literature on the social predictors of child health by paying particular attention to the importance of the resources in the child's immediate social context, such as dynamics within households, the role of grandparents, and the resources in the local community.
Her important work contributes to the understanding of social determinants of child health in the world region with the highest rate of infant and child mortality, as well as to ways in which children's health can be promoted.
Read Chiara Puglisi's thesis in CADMUS.
Mar Cañizares' thesis proposes a novel conceptual framework to investigate the mechanism underlying the persistent intergenerational transmission of educational inequalities worldwide. It focuses on the heterogeneity by social origins in the prevalence of a potentially negative event, and in the penalty associated with that outcome for future educational success.
The committee has considered this thesis an excellent and innovative contribution to social stratification research and has praised Cañizares for her brilliant work and oral defence.
Read Mar Cañizares' thesis in CADMUS.