My current research examines the sociocultural aspects of knowledge infrastructures, with a particular focus on the "choreographies" that databases impose on humans. Building on Cussins' ontological choreography and Haraway's work on theaters of persuasion, I examine how the apparent solidity of digital infrastructures often conceals precarious arrangements of human labor, making visible universal processes of technological dependency through detailed ethnographic analysis.
Currently, I serve as Principal Investigator on the ANID Fondecyt project "The Hidden Life of Databases" (2025-2029), which examines how databases influence organizational practices across various sectors in Chile. My recent work has appeared in Science, Technology & Human Values, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology, and Society, and other international journals.
My research trajectory spans from colonial art history to contemporary digital sociology, always focusing on how material practices and symbolic systems intersect. I have mentored seven doctoral dissertations to completion since 2015, contributing to the development of the next generation of scholars in sociology and critical theory.
Publications
Fernando A. Valenzuela
Cuadernos de Teoría Social, vol. 10(20), 2024, pp. 143-181
Standardizing excellence: metric assemblages in mathematics research in Chile
Fernando A. Valenzuela, María Isabel Cortez, Mariel Sáez, Andrea Vera-Gajardo
Science, Technology & Human Values, 2024
David Marchant, Carla Fardella, Fernando A. Valenzuela
Educación en Digital, Julio Labraña, José Joaquín Brunner, Emilio Rodríguez-Ponce, Francisca Puyol, Redefiniendo la Educación Superior Chilena: Cambio Organizacional y Nuevas Formas de Gobernanza, Universidad Diego Portales, 2023, pp. 215-240
David Marchant-Cavieres, Carla Fardella, Fernando A. Valenzuela, J. Espinosa-Cristia, Paulina E. Varas, Claudio Broitman
Tapuya: Latin American Science Technology and Society, vol. 6(1), 2023, pp. 2572-9861
Fernando A. Valenzuela, Eduardo Bustos, Cristian Valderrama
Sociología y Tecnociencia, vol. 13(2), 2023, pp. 1-23
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Projects
Urdimbres: The Hidden Life of Databases
The Hidden Life of Databases: Interdisciplinary research investigating how digital infrastructures influence organizational life in Chile. Studying the invisible yet powerful role of databases in shaping work, identity, and coordination.
Sociology study of women mathematicians in Chile examining career trajectories, institutional barriers, and gender dynamics in academia to inform STEM equity policies.
Telemedicine, Controversy, and Social Change
How does telemedicine reshape healthcare and society? This ethnographic study explored the social construction of distance medicine in Chile, uncovering how medical technologies simultaneously transform and are transformed by social life.
Science and Technology Studies project examining how social scientific data and narratives performatively shape Chilean social reality through socio-material assemblages, using Actor-Network Theory and performativity frameworks.
Art as Communication in Early World Society
Sociological analysis of colonial Andean painting as a form of communication, examining how visual ornamentation enabled intercultural meaning-making in peripheral contexts of early world society through Luhmann's systems theory.