Stephan Gruber Awarded Doctorate

Stephan Gruber successfully defended his dissertation, “Discipline and Promise: The Rise of Neoliberalism in Peru (1945–2000),” at the University of Duisburg-Essen's Faculty of Social Sciences in February. His research shows that neoliberal hegemony in Peru was not primarily shaped by external influences but by internal developments. A combination of technocratic depoliticization and populist promises proved crucial, changing economic thinking among the population. Bringing together the history of ideas, political economy, and the sociology of knowledge in his methodology, Gruber uses archival work and interviews to examine the role of universities, think tanks, and political parties in the process. Stephan Gruber was a doctoral researcher in the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) at the MPIfG between 2020 and 2025 and is currently working as a postdoc in its Economic Sociology Research Area.