Emily Elia
Areas of Specialization: Comparative politics, Latin American politics, electoral accountability, representation
Dissertation Advisor: Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Emily Elia is a PhD candidate in political science. She studies comparative politics with a substantive focus on political behavior and institutions and a regional focus on Latin America. Specifically, Emily studies electoral accountability and candidate evaluation in contexts of corruption. Her dissertation, “Evading Electoral Accountability: How Political Elites Maintain Voter Support in Contexts of Corruption,” flips traditional approaches to accountability, a typically voter-focused topic, on their heads by asking what strategies political elites use to evade accountability, particularly in response to allegations of corruption. Her dissertation explores three strategies Latin American elites use to evade accountability and ensure continued voter loyalty in the face of corruption accusations: competency compensation, the feminization strategy, and anticorruption legislation. Emily uses original survey experiments, bill proposal data, and elite interviews from fieldwork to test her theoretical expectations. Her dissertation is fully funded by Rice University’s Social Sciences Research Institute and a James T. Wagoner Foreign Study Award. Her work has appeared in Electoral Studies and is currently under review at Political Behavior. As an instructor of record, Emily taught Latin American Politics in Spring 2023, and she will teach Corruption in Politics in Spring 2024. Additionally, she has served as a teaching assistant to Introduction to Comparative Politics. Emily has completed an accredited professional Certificate of Teaching and Learning at Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence. Emily is prepared and excited to teach courses on comparative politics broadly, Latin American politics, representation, corruption, political behavior, comparative institutions, and electoral accountability, as well as research design and experimental survey methods.
Gladys Zubiria
Areas of Interest: Peace and Conflict Studies, International Relations, Civil Wars
Dissertation Advisor: T. Clifton Morgan
Gladys Zubiria is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, majoring in International Relations. Her research focuses on peace and conflict studies, with an emphasis on understanding post-conflict outcomes and peace sustainability. She has co-authored work on the use of violence in the Colombian Conflict, as well as on ex-combatants' perceptions of reintegration processes after the peace agreement with FARC. In her dissertation, Gladys studies the role of third parties in contributing to durable peace in post-conflict settings by fostering the belligerent parties' political and social reintegration processes. She explores the long-term and sometimes unintended consequences of third parties on post-conflict outcomes by analyzing cross-national data on the use of economic sanctions and international negotiation, while also focusing on the role of women in conflict resolution efforts. Before coming to Rice, Gladys worked as an instructor at Universidad del Norte in Colombia, where she taught courses on negotiation and conflict resolution, the Colombian Conflict, and a seminar on Conflict and Peace. At Rice, she has been a teaching assistant in Introduction to International Relations and a course on the War in Ukraine. Gladys will teach a course on Civil Wars as a solo instructor in Fall 2023.