Professor Villacis received a B.A. in Economics from University of San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), a M.Sc. in Economics from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California-Berkeley in 2023. Before joining the University of Oregon he was an Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College and before his Ph.D. he was the head of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of Ecuador.
His research focuses on 1) exploring how societies shape and are shaped by quantifications, 2) studying the role of experts and how power relations shape expertise in the fields of corruption, dollarization, statistics, and gender, and 3) understanding how modern notions of anti-corruption are associated with austerity, inequality, and the compression of markets.
Villacis has an awarded participation in spaces of public sociology and data activism. He uses the tools, methods, and concepts of social science to construct bridges to broader audiences in an accessible manner. This includes newspaper articles, blog posts, radio station visits, television appearances, Youtube, and the classroom. He co-founded the Latin American Observatory of Population Censuses (OLAC), which has produced, since 2016, more than 200 didactic pieces analyzing and evaluating the transparency of public statistics. He is also the head coordinator of the official oversight of the 2022 population census in Ecuador, officialized through the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS). He regularly contributes to newspapers such as El Universo, El Telégrafo and digital outlets such as Open Democracy, GK, and the Dollarization Observatory. In addition, he has been quoted and interviewed in outlets such as The Washington Post (USA), El Diario (España), Clarin (Argentina), France24 (France), Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil), Revista Vistazo (Ecuador), Revista Lideres (Ecuador), Semana (Colombia), among others.
He was the head of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses in Ecuador, where he led the 2010 Population Census and administered more than 35 national official surveys - including the National Survey of Employment and Unemployment, the National Survey of Violence Against Woman, and the National Survey of Living Conditions. He also founded and directed private research companies and has been a consultant for international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and corporations such as Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. He is a Senior Fellow of the Corruption in the Global South Research Consortium and a Board Member of the Research Committee of Sociology of Population of the International Sociological Association (ISA). Professor Villacis has received awards for his contributions to public sociology, social initiatives, and outstanding teaching.