Francisca is a Project Manager and Researcher at LSE Consulting, where she contributes to research design, business development, and project management across a wide range of policy and socioeconomic topics. She is responsible for writing and coordinating project proposals reviewing and analysing qualitative and quantitative data during projects for various public and private sector clients, academics, experts and partner organisations.
Before joining LSE Consulting, she spent nearly three years as a Project Officer in the Foundation Centre for Quantitative Research (FCEC, Santiago de Chile). She implemented different research projects requested by public organisms, NGOs and private entities. These projects covered various anti-smoking and gambling-related health policies, educational initiatives, and organisational change. She engaged with stakeholders from multiple sectors and worked with interdisciplinary research teams. After this experience, Francisca worked as an independent researcher collaborating with three educational research centres to collect and analyse data for programme and university projects, best practices in school improvement; headteachers training; and diagnostic assessments for pedagogy students.
Overall, her research experience has aimed to inform future policy design and evaluation. Francisca has contributed to projects related to the political agency on the regional level, labour insurance schemes and how workers deal with health risks, political participation in youth, civic education initiatives, censorship in the film industry - all carried out in Chile - and participation in the labour market among women in Bangladesh.
At LSE Consulting, she has collaborated with interdisciplinary teams conducting data analysis, writing and reporting findings to different audiences for projects in the UK and Europe. Francisca has contributed to the following publications:
Authors: Jeremy Brice, Rossella Soldi, Pablo Alarcón-López, Javier Guitian, Julian Drewe, Daniela Baeza-Breinbauer, Francisca Torres-Cortés and Katie Wheeler
Date: November 2021
Client: European Parliament - DG Internal Policies
Authors: Lise Smit, Claire Bright, Robert McCorquodale, Matthias Bauer, Hanna Deringer, Daniela Baeza-Breinbauer, Francisca Torres-Cortés, Frank Alleweldt, Sendra Kara, Camille Salinier and Héctor Tejero Tobed
Date: February 2020
Client: European Commission - DG for Justice and Consumers
Francisca's research interests focus on access to higher education, the impact of policy on students' decision-making after post-secondary education, and equality in education in general. Broader areas of interest are gender inequalities, anti-racism and decolonisation. Her methods expertise involves quantitative data collection and analysis techniques and qualitative approaches.
Francisca holds an MSc in Social Research Methods from LSE and is a Licenciate in Sociology from the University of Chile.