Research Expertise and Interest

education policy, institutional change, organizational theory, civil society, sociology of education

Research Description

Jose Eos Trinidad is Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the University of California Berkeley. He is a sociologist focused on the study of organizations outside schools and the study of schools as organizations. He received his Joint PhD in Sociology and Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago.

Bringing together the sociologies of organizations and education, his research interrogates education policy, civil society, and institutional change. He is author of Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education (Oxford, 2025) and of more than 35 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis; Educational Researcher; Socius; Sociological Inquiry; Race Ethnicity & Education; and Social Science & Medicine.

His research primarily investigates the interaction between schools and "outside" research, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations — with consequences for our understanding of public policy implementation, school improvement, and civil society. His current research looks at these cross-sector partnerships (1) in large urban school districts like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, (2) with quantitative datasets assembled from US nonprofit tax records, and (3) in new civic organizations in developing countries. To understand policies and politics holistically, he is a multi-method researcher using quantitative causal inference strategies, qualitative interviews, and network analysis. 

View his curriculum vitae.