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Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. My research examines how violence and extralegal governance shape the political behavior of ordinary citizens by affecting their everyday experiences and the functioning of democratic institutions in Latin America. I am also interested in evaluating how public policies can address these legacies and foster sustainable democratic practices. My dissertation received the Gabriel A. Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics from the American Political Science Association in 2025. My research is published at the Journal of Peace Research, Comparative Political Studies, and Civil Wars. My book project explores how different wartime social orders influence claim-making in indigenous communities in Guatemala. Drawing on a natural experiment, archival research, interviews, and an original survey, I show that the preservation of social capital and exposure to ideologies during wars shape claim-making in the postwar period. I analyze how survivor communities mobilize today to claim health, education, and infrastructure and mobilize to defend their territories against extractivism, organized crime, and corruption. In additional projects, I study 1) how refugee hosting policies affect refugees’ political behavior ; 2) how commodity booms fuel criminal state capture; 3) how community demands for governance may lead to rebel remobilization after demobilization, and 4) how criminality and low levels of accountability shape perceptions of human rights in violent societies. I received my PhD in Peace Studies and Political Science from the University of Notre Dame in 2024 where I remain a research associate at the Kellogg Institute's Violence and Transitional Justice Lab. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Interamerican Policy and Research at Tulane University, a predoctoral fellow at the Montreal Center for International Studies (CÉRIUM) at the Université de Montréal and a Civil War Paths Fellow at the University of York. I also hold an MA in International Security cum laude from Sciences Po Paris. |
