Welcome – I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and an Economics of Conflicts Fellow at the International Crisis Group. I received my Ph.D. in Politics in the Politics Department at New York University, where I’m currently an Adjunct Faculty. My research interests lie in Comparative Politics and Political Methods and include the study of Conflict and State Capture by non-state armed groups with a regional specialization in Latin America. During my postdoctoral fellowship, I developed a new agenda on climate policy and resource politics, particularly on how non-state armed actors take advantage of climate shocks and what policies can counteract criminal governance in climate-distressed populations. You can also visit my new website!
My methods: I rely on formal models, structural estimation, and reduce-form and causal methodologies. I have utilized (and created) georeferenced machine learning tools to build novel data on crime, illegal crops, and urban poverty areas.
I received NYU’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship 2020-2021. My research has also been supported by organizations including the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Fulbright-Garcia Robles Program, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), the Center for Studies in Security and Drugs (CESED) from Universidad Los Andes, among others. My scholarly work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Journal of Development Economics.
While in my Ph.D. at NYU, I also served as Principal Investigator for the Latin America Development Bank´s (CAF) “Slum Observatory” Project, and co-authored CAF’s leading chapter of the flagship annual Economy and Development Report 2017 on Urban Development in Latin America. In 2015 I served as a Research Assistant at the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) at Princeton University. Prior to NYU, I served as Director of the Economic and Public Security Research Division at the Center of Research for Development, A.C. (CIDAC), and as a Visiting Professor at the Political Science Department of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) where I thought Political Methodology. I received my BA in Economics from ITAM with the highest distinction. You can access my CV here. In my free time, I enjoy writing and reading about Christian theology, and salsa dancing.