FLUIDITY BETWEEN DISCIPLINES Hector Vera, a recent graduate of the PhD program, says, “One of the most attractive things about The New School for Social Research is the fluidity between disciplines; you are in constant contact with people in other fields.” According to Vera, The New School’s location in New York City—with access to some of the richest intellectual, cultural, and human resources in the world—has benefited his education immensely: “The New School is exciting. With its research libraries, other universities, and the people who come from all over the world to give lectures on diverse topics, the city is a very good place to be in contact with a lot of people and ideas.” Vera arrived in the United States after earning his BA at the Universidad Iberoamericana and his MA at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He describes The New School as a “natural fit, because some of the sociologists that I admired the most taught at The New School, which has a very good reputation among social scientists in Mexico.” Vera conducted a sociological analysis of the history of the decimal metric system, which was invented during the French Revolution and has since been adopted in all but three countries in the world. For his dissertation, he compared the implementation of the metric system in Mexico with the failed attempts to get the United States to adopt it. Vera is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre la Universidad y la Educación at UNAM.
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One of the most attractive things about The New School for Social Research is the fluidity between disciplines; you are in constant contact with
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people in
other fields.
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