Rafael Shimabukuro

Girton College crest
Girton College
  • Research Fellow in Latin American Development 
Rafael Shimabukuro

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About

Rafael is a critical social scientist whose work cuts across Politics, Sociology, History and Geography. Before joining the Centre of Development Studies, Rafael was a PhD candidate in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarship Programme. He holds a MSc in Politics Research from the University of Oxford and a BA in Economics, Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. He was born and raised in Lima, Peru.

Research

Rafael’s research agenda is driven by the desire to understand the diverse ways the working classes and other subaltern groups pursue differing visions of ‘progress’ and modernity.

His past research has examined neoliberalism from below in 1990s Peru. Against common academic and activist narratives which focus exclusively on repression, he argues the neoliberal turn cannot be properly understood without examining neoliberalism from below, the variegated processes through which the working classes (re)produce neoliberalism.

He also has an ongoing interest in issues around urban planning, local democracy and socialist self-management, informed by his interactions with Villa El Salvador, a district of Lima founded as a self-managed urban commune in the early 1970s. Beyond this, he is interested in issues of race, ethnicity and colonialism, and he has published on the politics of ethnic clothing.

Key publications: 

Peer-reviewed Articles 

  • Shimabukuro, R (2025). ‘Heroic Creation and the Socialist City: The Making of Villa El Salvador’. Antipode.
  • Shimabukuro, R (2025). ‘Kimonos, Ponchos and Blue Jeans: The Politics of Clothing in Alberto Fujimori’s Performative Populism’. Political Studies.

Book and Film Reviews 

  • Shimabukuro, R (2024). ‘Las imágenes del poder: Alberto Fujimori, Imagen y poder de Christabelle Roca-Rey’. Trama Crítica.
  • Shimabukuro, R (2024). ‘After the Collapse: Heddy Honigmann’s Metal and Melancholy 30 Years On’. Alternautas, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 272-278.
  • Shimabukuro, R (2022). ‘Marx in the Field by Alessandra Mezzadri (ed.)’. Capital & Class, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 301-303.
  • Shimabukuro, R (2021). ‘Crisis and Inequality: The Political Economy of Advanced Capitalism by Mattias Vermeiren’. Economic Issues, vol. 26, no. 2, pp.104-106.

Other publications: 

  • Shimabukuro, R (2024). ‘Pastéis de nata’. Litro Magazine.