I am an Assistant Professor of Politics at Lake Forest College. Before joining the college, I was a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University, where I also received my Ph.D. I am a researcher in comparative politics working on political institutions and representation with Latin America as my regional focus. My research and teaching lie at the intersection of representation, identity, ethnicity, and institutions. I deploy a broad set of methodological tools in my work, chiefly qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis), which I combine with various other methodologies, including natural language processing, network analysis, and experimental methods.
I study party organizations: a) their survival, b) their linkages to voters, and c) the determinants of candidate selection (gender perspective). I also study group identity construction (at the individual and group level) and how these identities affect party formation and persistence, the linkages between parties and voters, and inter-group relations.
I specialize in teaching qualitative methods at the graduate level, introductory and mid-level seminars on Introduction to Comparative Politics, Women’s Representation, and Latin American Politics, and advanced-level seminars on political parties and democracy with a regional focus in Latin America. My work is entirely bilingual: I research, write, and teach in English and Spanish.
Before starting my career in academia, I served at the Ecuadorian Mission to the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington D.C. as Second Secretary Alternate Representative of Ecuador. I joined the Permanent Mission in July 2012. My work there concentrated on the negotiation of Inter-American Human rights conventions.
Interests
- Political parties’ survival
- Political parties’ mobilization strategies
- Women’s representation
- Ethnic parties / Ethnic identities
- Qualitative methods
Education
PhD in Political Science, 2021
Leiden University
MSc in Political Science (cum laude), 2015
Leiden University
BSc in Sociology with a minor in Political Science, 2011
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador