I am the Claire Tow Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. My research agenda focuses broadly on illicit global economies, organized crime, Latin American politics, and subnational comparative analysis.

In my first book, Cities, Business and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America (Stanford University Press, 2016), I analyzed how the relationships between city mayors, business interests, and criminal organizations shape the ways in which major developing world cities respond to the challenge of urban violence. In my second book, Resisting Extortion: Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2022), I tackle the following question: Why do victims resist similar forms of criminal victimization in contrasting ways? In this book I use the widespread but understudied phenomenon of criminal extortion in Latin America to introduce resistance to criminal victimization into the emerging research on the politics of crime.

My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Open Society Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Fulbright Program, among others.

I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico and other parts of Latin America.