Bio

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I study judicial politics and democratic backsliding, with a focus on how courts defend their independence when elected leaders target them. My dissertation asks: how do constitutional courts respond to sustained populist attacks, and how that response helps maintain their independence? I develop this argument through the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court, tracing its behavior from redemocratization to the present, with Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency as the central case.

More broadly, I am interested in public opinion toward courts, and the institutional foundations of democratic resilience in Latin America. I also have a strong interest in the politics of religion and its influence on electoral behavior, specifically how evangelical churches shape vote choice and electoral outcomes in Brazil. Methodologically, I work mostly with survey experiments and observational causal inference.

At UW-Madison, my dissertation advisor is Nils Ringe. Aditionally, I coordinate the Methods, Experiments, and Data (MEAD) Workshop and serve as a project assistant for Lawyers and Democratic Decline at the Law School. My research has appeared in the Journal of Politics in Latin America and the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and has been supported by grants from APSA, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and UW–Madison.

Before beginning my PhD in Political Science, I researched, taught and practiced law. I hold a PhD in Law from the University of Brasília, an LL.M. from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and an LL.B. from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, where I also taught civil and criminal procedure. I then spent over five years as a legal advisor in the Brazilian Air Force, including as counsel to the Chief Commander’s Office.