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 current collaborative research projects include: design and analysis of representative surveys of attitudes toward cash transfers in seven Latin American countries, with a focus on children (funded by the German Research Foundation DFG); analysis of policy efforts and outputs on violence against women (I am heading the policy section of the Lancet Commission on Violence Against Women and Children); and a 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).  I teach graduate and undergraduate courses on Latin American politics and comparative welfare regimes.  

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. 

Recent research publications  

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. 

Lancet Global Health Viewpoint, linkages between cash transfers and intimate partner violence programming in Latin America (2021). 

Recent policy briefs 

Our brief report on our pilot health services project, to combat the rise of syphilis, especialy congenital syphilis, in Colombia, is out (December 2023) and 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. 

Together with Juliana Martinez Franzoni and co-authors, we published in 2023/2024 seven country-specific policy briefs on public opinion on cash transfers toward children, in the first systematic study of its kind, in English and in Spanish. They include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. 

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

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.