Vaclav Masek Sánchez is a Ph.D. candidate in political ecology at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), where his dissertation examines alliance-building for ecosocial transformation across Latin America. He is a member of the REAL Project: A Post-Growth Deal research team, working under the supervision of Giorgos Kallis and Diego Andreucci.

He holds an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Southern California and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University, where he also completed a triple-major B.A. in Sociology, Spanish, and Global Liberal Studies.

His interdisciplinary research addresses the political economy of extractivism, Indigenous and urban popular resistance movements, and post-conflict politics in Central and South America, using multi-sited ethnographic and participatory methods. His work has appeared in Radical Americas, the International Journal for Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy, International Area Studies Review, and NACLA Report on the Americas, among others.

Masek Sánchez has presented at major international conferences, including LASA and the International Sociological Association World Congress, and at venues across Europe and the Americas. He writes regularly for Spanish- and English-language outlets, including El País, CNN en Español, and El Faro, and has held fellowships from the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, and USC's Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He serves as Graduate Student Representative for LASA's Central America Section (2025–2027).