Mariana Ramírez Bustamante is a six-year Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, where she is also a graduate researcher affiliated with the LAPOP Lab. Her research includes studies of organized crime, voting behavior, representation, and public opinion. For her dissertation on the effect of drug trafficking on citizens’ political attitudes and behavior, she has received support from the APSA Centennial Center, and Vanderbilt University, including the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX), the College of Arts and Science, the Department of Political Science, and the Graduate Leadership Institute.

She has published in the Journal of Democracy, among other peer-reviewed journals in Peru and Latin America. She is a co-author of Democracia y territorio en países unitarios. Una agenda de investigación pendiente (Democracy and Territory in Unitarian Countries. Unsettled Research Agenda), along with other academic books and reports. Before beginning the Ph.D. program, she worked as a researcher for various institutions in Peru, including electoral management bodies and the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs. Her research focuses on the Latin American region, with a particular emphasis on Peru’s political landscape. For over a decade, she has been involved in the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data for academic research on electoral participation, representation, and direct democracy mechanisms, as well as drug trafficking and anti-trafficking policies. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Government from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2013), an M.A. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University (2022), and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Salamanca University (2016).

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