Carlos Alberto Torres, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education and Director of the Latin American Center at UCLA, is a political sociologist of education. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 1st, 1950,  he did his undergraduate work in sociology at the Jesuit Universidad del Salvador, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, obtaining a B.A. with honors in Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and a teaching credential in Sociology in the Faculty of Pedagogy and Sciences of Communication. He worked also as General Secretary of the Institute for the Study of Science in Latin America, ECLA, in the same university, and was appointed Lecturer in Sociology in 1975.

In 1976, on the eve of what proved to be a ferocious military dictatorship, he left Argentina to conduct graduate work in Mexico, receiving a fellowship at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO, where he obtained an M.A. in Political Science. After completion of his studies with a Masters dissertation on the Political Economy of Argentina, 1955-1973, he worked for several Mexican universities, was one of the founding professors of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, and worked for the Secretariat of Public Education in the Department of Adult Education as educational researcher.

With a fellowship from Stanford University and other sources, including the Organization of American States, he moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies, obtaining a Master of Arts in Education and a Ph.D. in International Development Education from Stanford University (1994). He received the Ph.D. Dissertation Fellowship from the Interamerican Foundation to complete his dissertation, a large-scale research survey on adult education state policies and practices in Mexico. Returning to Mexico, he accepted a position (1993-1996) as Professor in FLACSO, Mexico. In 1986 he accepted a Fulbright grant from the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIED) for teaching at World College West in Petaluma, California, September-December 1986. The same year he received the coveted Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Post-Doctoral Scholarship in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Alberta, where from December 1986 until June 1988 he conducted post-doctoral studies on educational foundations in Canada. At the conclusion of his post-doctoral studies, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations, and remained on the faculty at the University of Alberta until he accepted his present appointment at UCLA in March, 1990. He received the National Academy of Education-Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1990-1992).

He is also Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, created with Paulo Freire, Moacir Gadotti, José Eustaquio Romão, Walter García and Francisco Gutierrez in 1991. He has been Vice-President, Research Committee on Political Education, IPSA (1983-1997); Past-President, CIES (1994-1998); and President, Research Committee on Sociology of Education, International Sociological Association (1998-2002). He is the editor of the prestigious Routledge (New York) series on Education, Social Theory and Cultural Change, and Chair of the Commission on Education and Society of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences(CLACSO), a federation of 180 research centers in Latin America.

He has served as an evaluator for the Fulbright Program, and the Program for Gifted and Talented Children, US. Department of Education. At UCLA he is currently the Director of the Latin American Center, and has served as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies; Head of the Division of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, Department of Education; Chair, Committee of Academic Personnel, Department of Education; and on the Advisory Committees of International Studies and Oversees Programs (ISOP), the Chicano Studies Research Center, the Pacific Rim Center, the Latin American Studies Inter-Departmental Program (IDP), and, as ex-officio, the Latin American Center. He served on the Committee for the establishment of the César Chávez Center. He has been an Educational Adviser (ad honorem) of the Argentine National Congress, and is currently a member of the National Commission for the Plan of Science and Technology of Argentina (2001).

Dr. Torres has authored 40 books and more than 150 research articles, chapters in books, and entries in encyclopedias in several languages. He has participated in and presented papers and been keynote speaker regularly for the last twenty years at national and world congresses of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología (ALAS), the Comparative International Educational Society (CIES), the International Council of Comparative Education Societies, the International Political Science Association (IPSA), the International Sociological Association (ISA), and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

Dr. Torres has been a visiting professor at universities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Portugal, Taiwan, Korea, and Sweden. He has lectured throughout Latin America and the United States, and at universities in England, Finland, Japan, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa.

 

 

 

Dr. Torres' birthday celebration was truly a momentous event at which friends, colleagues, and relatives gathered from all over the world to share in festivities that marked the passing of half a century of achievement and to ring in a new era of his life.

Examples of his most recent books are the following:

Critical Social Theory and Education: Freire, Habermas and the Dialogical Subject. (with Raymond Morrow). New York, Teachers College Press-Columbia University, in press.

Comparative Education: The Dialectics of the Global and the Local (with Robert Arnove, editors). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.

Democracy, Education, and Multiculturalism: Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Education, Power and Personal Biography. Dialogues with Critical Educators. New York, Routledge, 1998.

Education and Democracy: Paulo Freire, Social Movements, and Educational Reform in São Paulo (with Pilar O'Cadiz and Pia Wong). (Bolder, Co: Westview,1998) Sociology of Education: Emerging Perspectives (with Ted Mitchell, editors). SUNY Press, Albany, New York, 1998.

Education in Latin America: Comparative Perspectives. (With Adriana Puiggros, editors.), Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996.

Social Theory and Education. A Critique of Theories of Social and Cultural Reproduction. (With Raymond Morrow). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995.