Maria Elisa Balen

Maria Elisa Balen is interested in the sociology of money, critical accounting, perspectives of governance and the sociology of knowledge. In the past she has worked in various social programs with an emphasis in education including a transition program for youths to go back into school, a rural libraries network, and a program to promote the engagement of students with public policy. In her PhD she researched the implications of a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia, analyzing techniques and experiences surrounding information production, money/finance, women’s empowerment and changing modes of politics. She has been active in discussions around the role of conditional cash transfer programs in changing social protection systems in various scenarios including the Second ISA Forum of Sociology in Buenos Aires (2012) and the Colombian XI National Sociology Congress in Medellín (2014), having recently co-authored an article on the subject entitled “Policy Transfer: an invitation to revisit the work of Latour, Star and Marres” (2015). She holds a bachelor degree in History from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and an MSc and PhD in Sociology from the University of Bristol. In her present capacity as an associate researcher of the Grupo de Protección Social at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, she is carrying out a comparative study of mobile banking regulation in Bolivia and Colombia.