Arielle Concilio Parra (MA Economics, John Jay College, 2022) successfully defended her PhD in Economics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid on April 10, 2026. Her dissertation, Essays on the Political Economy of Disability offers a groundbreaking analysis of disability and its role within capitalist society. Drawing on Marxist political economy and feminist economics, her research examines how disability is shaped by the commodification of labor-power, the structure of labor markets, and the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and crisis.

Arielle’s work combines theoretical and empirical analysis, including a case study of the U.S. nursing home industry, to demonstrate how disability is not simply a medical or social condition but is fundamentally linked to the organization of production and the exclusion of certain populations from wage labor. Her research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that situates disability within broader questions of inequality, labor markets, and social reproduction.

Her Doctoral studies were in part funded by the Union of Radical Political Economy Dissertation Fellowship.

Before beginning her doctoral studies, Arielle completed her MA in Economics at John Jay College. In her acknowledgments of her dissertation she expresses her thanks to  the John Jay Economics Department and writes: “I could never have completed this PhD without the constant support and comradeship of the entire Department of Economics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. I am especially grateful to professors Geert Dhondt, Ian Seda Irizarry, Christian Parenti, Joe Rebello, and Jay Hamilton for their constant support while I was completing my Masters, for making every accommodation necessary, and for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. To my former classmates, especially those of the first and second cohorts of the MA program for restoring my revolutionary optimism when I was on the brink of losing my faith.”

Her work has been published in journals such as Forum for Social Economics, Monthly Review, and Science and Society, the latter awarded her Honorable Mention for the Leith Mullings Best Graduate Student Paper. She has also presented at international conferences in political economy and feminist economics.

She is currently teaching as an adjunct instructor at John Jay College, where she teaches courses in microeconomics, introductory economics, and classes focused on gender and disability.

We are proud to count Arielle among our alumni and congratulate her on this major achievement.