Danilo Reuben-Matamoros

Profile

Licenciatura in Sociology (University of Costa Rica, 2002) – My dissertation dealt with the socially constructed meaning of post-mortem Catholic rituals (wakes, funerals, burials, and novenaries), and the intersection of religious, secular, personal and commercial meanings and practices; I conducted interviews with catholic priests, funeral home directors, and mourners.

MA Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (Leiden University, 2013) – ‘Media, Visual and Material Culture’ track. I conducted ethnographic research (three months fieldwork) at a major Costa Rican advertising agency, looking into the creative and production processes of various T.V. and print commercials, the role of marketing research and other sources, and the organizational culture.

MA Social Media and Social Research (University of York, 2019) – My dissertation looked into issues of civility in the comment sections of both The Guardian and The Daily Mail’s Facebook pages, discussing the definition and measurement techniques of online civility, and its implications for deliberative democracy.

I have over six years of experience as lecturer at the University of Costa Rica’s Sociology, Public Health, and Library and Information Sciences Schools, with full teaching responsibilities in a variety of modules; I also collaborated in the organization of the Latin-American Sociological Association’s XXX Congress held in 2015, in Costa Rica, as well as coordinating its third workgroup: ‘Production, Cultural Consumption and Media’. I was also part of the Library and Information Sciences School’s ‘Final Graduation Works’ Committee for over two years, evaluating the Licenciatura students research, and have participated in various academic talks and research projects at various universities in Central America.

Before working in academia I spent eight years in the third sector doing program evaluation at an educational informatics NGO in Costa Rica, and as a consultant for the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, providing support for the Central American Council of Ombudsman Offices.

Research interests

• deliberative democracy
• narrative theory
• counterpublics
• online civility
• symbolic interactionism
• epistemology