Welcome!

I am Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Hamburg, with a focus on global health and social policy.

My research addresses the question of when and how  governments produce more equity-enhancing and effective policies. With a focus on Latin America, I have analyzed policy areas that intersect social, health, family, gender and labor policy. My most recent collaborative research projects have examined health and social protection policies. Outputs include a Lancet Global Health article (2026) on quantifying and comparatively assessing implementation on policies on VAW (violence against women), the design of representative surveys of attitudes toward cash transfers in seven Latin American countries and analysis of determinants of these attitudes, published in Latin American Politics and Society (2026), and an analysis of a quasi-experiment of adherence to treatment among individuals with syphilis in a Colombian border town with Venezuela (2026), published in Lancet Regional Health-Americas (2026). 

In September 2025 I returned to the ILAS Directorship at the GIGA with a joint appointment, after two years as a full-time professor at the University of Hamburg. Between 2020 and 2023, as ILAS Director, I steered the institute through the Leibniz Association's evaluation process where the external evaluation committee report in 2022 highlighted that the ILAS had "developed excellently into a global reference institution" (pg.44, B-13). Before 2020, I was Professor of Political Science and Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Miami, where I received the May Brunson Award in 2019 for doing the most to improve the status of women at the university. 

Other peer-reviewed publications in the last three years

Cambridge Element,The Politics of Social Protection during Times of Crisis (2023), with Jenny Pribble and Cecilia Giambruno.

The Lancet, Setbacks in the quest for universal health coverage in Mexico: polarised politics, policy upheaval, and pandemic disruption, (2023) led by Felicia Knaul,  open access.

The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management of Social Policy (2023). With Camila Arza and Fernando Filgueira, I am co-editor of the Latin America section. 

Recent policy briefs 

-Seven policy briefs, in English and in Spanish (2023-2024), summarizing the descriptive findings of the representative surveys of attitudes toward cash transfers itoward children in seven Latin American countries, in the first systematic study of its kind, and calculation of the fiscal cost of extending food-basket value transfers to all children in poverty, in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. The sureys were funded by a German Research Foundation DFG research grant and carried our by Juliana Martinez Franzoni and myself, and policy briefs were co-authored with locally based scholars. 

-A policy brief in Spanish (December 2023), summarizing the findings of the project on enhancing the detection, diagnosis and treatment of the rising epidemic of syphilis at the Colombia-Venezuela border (funded by the German Society for International Cooperation GIZ). rIt reports on our pilot health services project, to combat the rise of syphilis, especialy congenital syphilis, in Colombia, is available here. Implemented by CARE Colombia between March and August 2023, our team (myself, Rafael Olarte, Doris Parada and Magaly Pedraza) embedded three studies into the project, to investigate the relative weight of diffferent social determinants of syphilis. 

-G-7/T-7 policy brief, published May 2022, Toward a Global Universal Basic Income for Children. 

Previous blogs and commentaries

Here is a March 2023 podcast on addressing and supporting survivors of gender-based violence through social protection, in which I participate. 

Here is our October 2022 commentary on the Bolsonaro government's record on gender-based violence policies, in the Latin America Advisor, published by the Inter-American Dialogue.

Here is my November 2021 EU-LAC blog calling for a new social contract for children in Latin America, en espanhol aqui 

Here is my November 2021 zoom commentary (at min.44) on the UNDP State of Human Development 2021 Report on Latin America and the Caribbean, presented by Director Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva 

Here is my November 2021 written commentary on gender-based violence policies in the Latin America Advisor, published by the Inter-American Dialogue. 

Here is a link to an August 2021 interview I did on the Corona crisis in Latin America, with Deutsche Welle. 

Personal profile 

I was born and raised in Finland, and earned my undergraduate and Masters’ degrees at York University in Canada. I completed my Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill, in the United States. I have had the fortune to live in many cities (and five countries) across the Americas, and my daughters were born in São Paulo, Brazil. I moved back to Europe after many years in Miami, and now live in Hamburg, Germany.