My name is Mariana Giusti-Rodríguez. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. I study comparative race and ethnic politics, political behavior, social movements, and party politics, with a regional focus on Latin America. I received my Ph.D. from Cornell University in August 2018.

My research examines how ethnoracial identities shape patterns of political behavior and achieve political representation.  In my book project, titled “Short-Circuited Representation: Social Networks and Indigenous Party Building in Latin America,” I investigate how social network structures condition indigenous party building outcomes across the Andean region. Its central argument is that organizational network structures delineate new parties’ mobilization strategies, linkage mechanisms, and opportunities for consolidation. The project is based on more than three years of fieldwork in the Andean region. A related article has been published (early view) in the American Political Science Review.

A second line of research explores how state-society relations shape ethnoracial identities and condition ethnoracial groups’ patterns of demand-making and political preferences and behavior. An article based on this research has been published in Comparative Politics.

My research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the US Fulbright-Hays, US Fulbright, Ford Foundation, University of Pennsylvania’s Office of the Provost, the Tinker Foundation, and Cornell University.

You can find my CV here.