congratulations Dr Matias Hernandez Munoz

Congratulations to Matias who has passed his PhD viva today. Awarded a PhD in Culture, and the Creative Industries.

Entitled “The Cultural Workforce in Chile: Probabilistic and Predictive Models to Identify and Improve their Socioeconomic Situation’ it was examined by Prof Lluis Bonet (University of Barcelona), and Dr Andrej Srakar (University of Ljubljana).

The examiners were very complementary on the innovative and ambitious thesis and they looked for ward to publications and policy debates triggered by it. Matias’s thesis was supervised by Prof Andy Pratt and Dr Jenny Mbaye.

The abstract is here:
This study starts with a literature review to understand the labour market and its development over the last century, where this study commences. A subsequent look at the cultural labour market and the socioeconomic situation of its workers serve to analyse how countries are dealing with their cultural governance and on which objectives they base their cultural policy on. It is followed by an investigation about how statistical systems work on accounting for industries’ characteristics and how it differs for the cultural sector and its workforce. The barriers and challenges that statistical systems present are reviewed to account for the actual socioeconomic situation of cultural workers and address their labour problem. After the literature review, this study identifies the reasons for the complex socioeconomic conditions of cultural workers. This considering that the free market does not provide enough income to them and public policies do not sustainably correct market failures that constrain their revenues, especially in the Global South. Then, identifying the most relevant variables affecting the socioeconomic situation of cultural workers.
Later, the central part of the study offers three separate articles focused on solving specific problems that affect the socioeconomic situation of the cultural workforce based on public policies. The first article navigates the current pension system and how the informality associated with the cultural sector results in pre- carious pensions for cultural workers. Moreover, this investigation identifies the most relevant variables affecting the probability of contributing to their pensions for cultural workers. The second article analyses public funding mechanisms for art projects. It stresses that although the public sphere provides financial resources to those projects, the socioeconomic situation of cultural workers in- volved in those projects is not changing as the distribution of those funds is uneven and concentrated in particular artists. Finally, the third article proposes a policy that improves the basic export strategy of cultural goods and services, attracting new partners, increasing the exports levels, generating more income for
cultural workers, and improving their socioeconomic situation. Later, this study presents a chapter with a joint discussion covering interrelated results from the three articles, bridging the gaps on how these variables affect cultural workers’ socioeconomic situation and how to improve it via cultural policies. Finally, this investigation presents a brief chapter with conclusions and remarks and potential extensions of the current study.