Raúl Zepeda Gil

Raul is a Mexican interdisciplinary sociologist and political scientist who focuses on the nexus between the ideas underlying common conceptions of socioeconomic inequalities, armed conflicts, political conflicts, and existential threats to humanity, such as climate change. His analytical lenses span international political economy, critical policy analysis, history of ideas, analytical Marxism, and stratification sociology.

He is currently an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 2023 to 2024, he was a Lecturer in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Raul holds a PhD in Sociology of War from the School of Security Studies in King’s College London (KCL), a master’s degree in political science from El Colegio de México and a bachelor’s degree in political science and public administration from the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM).

Raul is currently researching several topics, mainly on youth recruitment by criminal organisations and labour market inequalities in the Latin American drug wars. He also focuses on climate change politics, teachers’ education policy, civil-military relations, austerity, inequalities and criminal violence, and international politics of the war on drugs. Moreover, Raul is beginning to craft a research agenda on the political theory of existential risk and on discourses of human nature in response to the climate change crisis.

In his publications, he has discussed criminal wars in Latin America, schooling and homicide, the political economy of drug wars, youth, economic policy, human rights, higher education funding, civil-military relations in United Nations peacekeeping operations, disaster management and climate change, peace-making with the Colombian drug cartels, youth policy in Latin America and Africa, and Mexican politics.

In between academic posts and studies, Raul has gained considerable experience in government and policy. He worked on youth crime policy at a local government, as a congressional researcher on politics for the Mexican Senate, as the liaison of the under-ministry of budget and the ministry of economy (trade and industry), and as advisor to the Mexican Mission to the International Maritime Organization in charge of climate change negotiations. Also, Raul has consulted for the Mexican National Commission for Human Rights, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the European Union Program on Drug Policy, and War Child UK.