Beatriz Magaloni is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. She is also an affiliated faculty at the Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development. Her research interests fall into four themes: the study of authoritarian regimes; electoral and distributive politics; “traditional” forms of governance and non-state provision of public goods; and violence, public security and human rights. Much of her research has focused on Latin America.

She is the founding director of the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab. The Povgov Lab engages researchers and students — undergraduates, M.A. and Ph.D. candidates — from the fields of political science, education, economics, international policy studies, and engineering with the goal of finding solutions to problems of lawlessness and violence.

She is the author of Voting for Autocracy (2006, Cambridge University Press –winner of the Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award for the best book written in the previous two years on parties and elections and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section). She is also the author of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief: Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico (2016, Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estévez).

Her research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Latin American Research Review, International Journal of Educational Development, Latin American Politics and Society, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Política y Gobierno.

Beatriz Magaloni received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and obtained her Law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros is Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University. His research interests include federalism, poverty relief, indigenous governance, the political economy of health, violence, and citizen security in Mexico and Latin America. He is the author of Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America (Cambridge, reedited 2016) and coauthor with Federico Estévez and Beatriz Magaloni of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief (Cambridge, 2016), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. He is currently working on a project concerning the developmental legacies of colonial rule and governance in indigenous communities in Mexico. In addition, he is the co-PI (with Beatriz Magaloni) of the project Citizen Trust and Evidence-Based Police Accountability and Professionalization in Mexico.

Jonathan Furszyfer is Academic Program Manager & Associate Researcher at Povgov. Prior to joining Povgov, Jonathan served as Director of Security Research at México Evalúa; Associate Research Specialist at ESOC-Princeton University; Graduate Researcher at the Center for US-Mexican Studies in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), as well as consultant and advisor to the World Bank, the Mexican federal government, and the private Sector. He is an alumni of the Empirical Studies of Conflict, as well as an affiliate with the ITAM-Mexican Center for Studies on Security, Intelligence and Governance, and the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network. His research focuses on police reform, criminal governance, immigration, and both survey and field experiments. Jonathan received his MPP from UCSD and his BA in political science (with honors) from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).

Luis A. Rodríguez is Data Scientist at Povgov. He is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and is a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at the Freeman Spogli Institute during the 2019-2020 academic year. His work is focused on state capacity, organized crime, immigration, and the application of machine learning techniques to social science problems.

Belinda Byrne is grant administrator for the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab. Prior to this role, she served for many years as executive director at the Freeman Spogli Institute, overseeing administration, finance, faculty affairs and institutional planning. Before that, she held management positions at Stanford’s Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine and at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree in Education/Learning Design and Technologies.

Stephanie is a PhD Candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and her dissertation analyzes the evolution and locality of violence in Brazil in the last few decades. She holds an MA in International Policy Studies from Stanford University and a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. She is currently engaged in the evaluation of a nationwide police certification program in Mexico. For the last few years, she has also consulted with USAID to evaluate a program seeking to reduce at-risk youth involvement in crime and violence in Guyana, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts and Nevis. 

Alice Yiqian Wang is Graduate Fellow at Povgov. She is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and a graduate fellow with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Her research is broadly concerned with immigration and citizenship policy in the United States and Europe. Currently, her work focuses on the dynamics of judicial decision-making in deportation and asylum proceedings, as well as on political control over the U.S. immigration courts. Alice holds a M.A. in Political and Legal Theory from the University of Warwick, which she attended on a US-UK Fulbright scholarship. She received her B.A. in Philosophy and Government from Smith College.

Cesar Vargas Nunez is Graduate Fellow at Povgov. He holds a BA (with honors) in Political Science from Pitzer College and is a current PhD Candidate in Stanford’s Political Science Department. Prior to Stanford, Cesar spent a year on a Fulbright conducting research on healthcare inequities in Spain and two years as a Research Assistant in San Diego State University’s Research Foundation. His current research interests are focused on the intersection of institutions, law and health. At Povgov, he is looking into the evolution of cartel behavior as these criminal organizations diversify their operations beyond drug-trade and into other criminal activities. This project will provide greater understanding into the changing behavior of cartels and its effects femicides, forced disappearances and mass graves. 

Sarah is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. She is interested in how politically marginalized groups in Latin America and South Asia interact with the state. Currently, her work focuses on the impacts of traditional governance, and improving women’s civic engagement. She received a B.A. (with honors) in Political Science from Columbia University. 

Madison Dalton is a Political Science Ph.D. student at Stanford University. She is interested in identifying strategies for reducing violence perpetrated against politically and socially marginalized individuals. Currently, her work focuses on preventative interventions addressing commercial sexual exploitation and violence against women and children. Prior to Stanford, she worked as a research associate for Mathematica Policy Research and served as a research fellow for the anti-trafficking nonprofit Love Justice International. She holds a B.S. (with honors) in Quantitative Science and Creative Writing from Emory University.