I am a Ph.D Candidate at Harvard’s Department of Government, and a resident affiliate at The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS).
Broadly, I’m interested the social and political consequences of exposure to political violence. Leveraging large-N administrative data analysis and causal inference techniques, my research aims to answer questions regarding how exposure to conflict influences the functioning of societies at an individual level. Current projects study the relationship between power, geography, gender, and internal displacement during civil war. I am particularly interested in learning more about how the mobilization of women influences the processes and outcomes of civil war, and how the long-term consequences of political violence are heterogeneous across gendered contexts.
Before coming to Harvard, I was a full-time research assistant at the The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, studying the political economy of conflicts in Colombia, Afghanistan and Chile. In 2018, I completed my B.A. in Political Science with Honors at ITAM in Mexico City.
Contact
mballesteros@g.harvard.edu
My Website
1737 Cambridge Street
Subfields
Comparative Politics | International Relations | Methods and Formal Theory
Academic Interests
Data Science and Political Methodology | Political Economy & Development | Political Geography | Security Studies
Research Methods
Quantitative Methods
Geographic Regions of Study
Asia | Latin America