I am an empirical political scientist studying political consolidation in the aftermath of war. My main focus has been on the electoral participation of political parties with violent origins. I study how guarantees of power shape their political mobilization, building on scholarship on reservations and power-sharing. I also study strategies to promote former rebels’ democratic engagement and examine the consequences of their participation for democracy. I have conducted novel experiments, surveys, and interviews in Colombia with ex-combatants, former commanders, civilian militants and peace agreement negotiators. I also use within-country electoral observational data as well as original cross-national data on 120 rebel parties. More recently, I am developing a second research agenda on violent and non-violent political mobilization in hybrid regimes with an empirical focus on Venezuela.
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and an Affiliate of the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) at Stanford University. I completed my PhD in Political Science at New York University’s Department of Politics.
My work has been supported by the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Institute for Humane Studies, the American Political Science Association Centennial Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (NYU-UR) and is published in the Journal of Politics.
I have deeply enjoyed teaching Comparative Politics, International Relations, Senior Honors Seminars, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency and Political Economy of Development. In 2021, I was honored to receive the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award.