Exhibit: "De toda la gente," Luis Ángel Arango Library, Bogotá, Colombia.
Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Government at Cornell University. My research focuses on law and society, social movements and contentious politics, and human rights.
My dissertation and book project leverages variation in contestation for social rights in Colombia and South Africa to better understand how legal mobilization emerges and who makes claims in different policy domains. Both countries underwent progressive constitutional reform to recognize social rights in the 1990s, but markedly distinct patterns of legal mobilization followed. In Colombia, legal claims to the right to health have become ubiquitous, dramatically exceeding claims to any other social right. In South Africa, on the other hand, claims to the right to health have been rather limited, focusing on HIV/AIDS related issues, while claims to the right to housing predominate. In explaining this variation, I develop a constructivist account of legal mobilization, explicating the central role of beliefs and unearthing the importance of repeated interaction between claimants, activists, lawyers, and judges for both the filing of rights claims and the official response to those claims. My findings are drawn from two years of fieldwork in Colombia and South Africa, including 178 elite interviews, nearly 100 interviews with rights claimants, two original surveys, and an analysis of legal cases using two originally-constructed databases. The project contributes to our understanding of important questions regarding the judicialization of politics, the politics of rights, and the politics of social welfare and social incorporation.
You can find my CV here, additional information about my research here, and an overview of my teaching experience here. For contact information, click here.
My dissertation and book project leverages variation in contestation for social rights in Colombia and South Africa to better understand how legal mobilization emerges and who makes claims in different policy domains. Both countries underwent progressive constitutional reform to recognize social rights in the 1990s, but markedly distinct patterns of legal mobilization followed. In Colombia, legal claims to the right to health have become ubiquitous, dramatically exceeding claims to any other social right. In South Africa, on the other hand, claims to the right to health have been rather limited, focusing on HIV/AIDS related issues, while claims to the right to housing predominate. In explaining this variation, I develop a constructivist account of legal mobilization, explicating the central role of beliefs and unearthing the importance of repeated interaction between claimants, activists, lawyers, and judges for both the filing of rights claims and the official response to those claims. My findings are drawn from two years of fieldwork in Colombia and South Africa, including 178 elite interviews, nearly 100 interviews with rights claimants, two original surveys, and an analysis of legal cases using two originally-constructed databases. The project contributes to our understanding of important questions regarding the judicialization of politics, the politics of rights, and the politics of social welfare and social incorporation.
You can find my CV here, additional information about my research here, and an overview of my teaching experience here. For contact information, click here.
