Dr. Simone Buechler is an assistant professor in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was a post-doctoral fellow with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University under Prof. Stiglitz after finishing an assistant professor/faculty fellowship in the Metropolitan Studies Program at New York University. Before returning to academia, she worked with non-governmental organizations and the United Nations Development Fund for Women setting up an international coalition on women and micro-credit with President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro. During her year as a GCI Scholar her two research foci were: urban inequality and the impact of economic globalization on low-income women’s employment in São Paulo, Brazil and Brazilian immigrants in Newark, NJ and the global economic crisis. She has conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research in São Paulo since 1996 following the lives of two generations of women in three low-income communities. In May 2013, she gave a talk on “Perceptions of Inequality and Employment in Three Low-Income Communities in São Paulo, Brazil”. Her book, Labor in a Globalizing City: Economic Restructuring in São Paulo, Brazil will soon be published by Springer International Publishing AG.
