I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As a scholar of international relations and public policy, my research advances our understanding of topics at the intersection of foreign policy, international security, and emerging technologies. In particular, I investigate the politics of cybersecurity policymaking using a mix of survey experiments, computer-assisted text analysis, and Bayesian process tracing.
In my dissertation, “Making Sense of Cybersecurity: How Narratives Affect the Foreign Policy Process”, I investigate a major puzzle: why do states overreact to some cybersecurity problems while persistently underestimating others? Using a multi-method design, my dissertation demonstrates that actors construct and use strategic narratives to define cybersecurity as a policy problem. This definition, in turn, underpins policy choices in national and international arenas. My dissertation research has been funded by an ISA Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
My non-dissertation research focuses on investigating how the public evaluates cybersecurity issues. This work has appeared in the journals Contemporary Security Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Conflict Management and Peace Science. This research was partly funded by a competitive APSA Centennial Center grant.
I am a member of the Latin American Cybersecurity Research Network. I was a research fellow at the National Center for Digital Government and a research associate in the Digital Governance Working Group at the Centro de Estudos Internacionais sobre Governo.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I have taught several introductory and advanced international relations and public policy classes, both online and face-to-face. I have a Master’s in Political Science and a Bachelor’s in History from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil.