I am a PhD candidate in political science at Vanderbilt University, working at the intersection of Comparative Political Economy and Political Behavior.

My book-style dissertation investigates how the spatial distribution of inequality shapes the state’s ability to extract revenue and deliver services, with a regional focus on Latin America. Empirically, I employ a mixed-methods approach, pairing qualitative fieldwork and original surveys with causal inference techniques on administrative data. Over fourteen months of fieldwork, I conducted interviews, focus groups, and a public opinion survey to probe the social foundations of state capacity in unequal societies.

In other projects, I examine the political economy of informality and property rights. This agenda seeks to understand how housing policies, labor formalization, and clientelistic exchanges shape the ways low-income individuals engage with the state. I am also interested in public attitudes toward democracy and the dynamics of democratic backsliding in the Global South.

My work has been supported by the American Political Science Association, the Society for Political Methodology, the LAPOP Lab, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI), the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLACX) at Vanderbilt, the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and Foundation for the Support of Science and Technology of the State of Pernambuco (FACEPE, Brazil).