I’m a Political Science PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I hold a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Political Science, along with minors in Development Studies and in German Language and Culture, all from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.
My research centers on peace studies, armed conflict, political violence, and research ethics, alongside long-standing interests in early childhood education, migration, state capacity, and the inequalities faced by rural women. I’m especially interested in how we can study sensitive and high-risk topics rigorously while protecting the safety and dignity of participants and field staff.
Much of my work is grounded in years of field experience designing and leading both quantitative and qualitative data collection across Colombia and Latin America — from large-scale survey experiments on political violence to program evaluations in education and migration. I currently serve as Research Manager and co-author on the Asking About Violence project, a multi-country study on the ethics and methodology of measuring exposure to violence, with Graeme Blair (UCLA), Lauren E. Young (UC Davis), and Rebecca Littman (UIC).
Before starting my PhD, I spent several years at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Colombia, where I planned and supervised in-person and remote data collection, designed WhatsApp and SurveyCTO instruments for hard-to-reach populations, and managed research projects on migration, early childhood education, and youth development.
I work with statistical and computational tools for data analysis (Stata, R, ArcGIS, Python) and data collection (SurveyCTO, Twilio for WhatsApp surveys, text mining), and I format my work in LaTeX. I speak Spanish (native), English (advanced), and German (intermediate).