María Ignacia Curiel is a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Research Affiliate of the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab at Stanford University. Curiel is an empirical political scientist using experimental, observational, and qualitative data to study questions of violence and democratic participation, peacebuilding, and representation.

Her research primarily explores political solutions to violent conflict and the electoral participation of parties with violent origins. This work includes an in-depth empirical study of Comunes, the Colombian political party formed by the former FARC guerrilla, as well as a broader analysis of rebel party behaviors across different contexts. More recently, her research has focused on democratic mobilization and the political representation of groups affected by violence in Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Hector Fuentes is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. His research focuses on Venezuelan elections, exploring the dynamics that led to this semi-competitive election, analyzing the strategic successes of the opposition, and identifying windows of opportunity for fostering a transition to democracy in Venezuela.

Dorothy Kronick is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley. She studies contemporary Latin American politics, focusing on Venezuelan politics and the politics of crime and policing. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Science, and Science Advances, among other outlets. Her commentary on Venezuelan politics has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Harold Trinkunas is a Senior Research Scholar and the Deputy Director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His work has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance.

Diego A. Zambrano is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Global Programs at Stanford Law School, specializing in the areas of civil litigation and comparative law. He is also the faculty director of the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law and Faculty Affiliate at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University. 

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C. in Mexico from 1997-1999. His work has focused on federalism, poverty and violence in Latin America, and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is: The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization. He currently serves as the co-director of the Democracy Action Lab at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDRRL) at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI).