Directors

Zachary Elkins is a professor in UT’s Government Department. His research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript, Steal this Constitution: The Drift and Mastery of Constitutional Design, which examines the design and diffusion of democratic institutions. Much of his research is on the origins and consequences of national constitutions. With Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website Constitute, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. Elkins earned his BA from Yale University, an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ashley Moran is research director for the Comparative Constitutions Project and a research scientist and lecturer in UT’s Government Department. Her research and teaching focus on comparative constitutional development, court elaboration of new constitutions, and divided societies. She is a distinguished scholar at UT’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law where she created the Center’s state fragility initiative and led its interdisciplinary research programs funded by the U.S. Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative and USAID Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. She previously worked in democratic, legal, and constitutional reform in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. She has an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a PhD from UT-Austin.

Advisory Board

Daniel Brinks is professor of Government and of Law. He is the chair of UT’s Government Department and is active in the fields of Comparative Politics and Public Law. He is a senior researcher & global scholar of the Centre on Law and Social Transformation, a joint project of the University of Bergen and Christian Michelsen Institute, in Bergen, Norway. His research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting or extending human rights and many of the basic rights associated with democracy, with a primary regional interest in Latin America. His recent book, written with Abby Blass, The DNA of Constitutional Justice in Latin America: Politics, Governance and Judicial Design, examines constitutional change in Latin America since 1975, focusing especially on judicial institutions and constitutional review. The book was awarded the C. Herman Pritchett Award for Best Book on Law and Courts in 2018 by the Law and Courts Section of the APSA.

Adela Pineda Franco is the Lozano Long Endowed Professor in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies and the director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining UT, she was Professor of Latin American Literature and Film at Boston University, where she also founded the Center of Latin American Studies. Her scholarly work situates the study of specific literary and cinematic phenomena within transnational contexts and comparative, interdisciplinary frameworks, addressing the relationships between culture, politics, intellectual thought, and technology. She has authored and co-edited numerous books, among them the award-winning Steinbeck y México. Una mirada cinematográfica en la era de la hegemonía estadounidense (2018). She is also well-known for her research on the international significance of the cultures of the Mexican Revolution.

Wendy Hunter is a professor in UT’s Government Department. She studies Comparative Politics, with an emphasis on Latin American affairs. She has done in depth work on the military in Brazil and the Southern Cone, as well as research on social policy issues in Latin America, with special attention to the politics of education and health reform.  She has also published a book on the Workers’ Party of Brazil. She currently works on issues concerning identity documentation in the developing world. She is the author of The Transformation of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, 1989–2009 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians against Soldiers (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), and has published articles in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and World Politics.

Raúl Madrid is a professor in UT’s Government Department and an affiliate of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies and the Center for Mexican-American Studies. He is also the faculty undergraduate adviser for the Government Department. He received his BA from Yale University and his MA and PhD from Stanford University. Before entering graduate school, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica and as a foreign affairs analyst for a not-for-profit research organization in Washington, DC. He is currently serving as co-chair of the College Board’s Comparative Government and Politics Development Committee, which makes up the Advanced Placement exams in comparative politics. He specializes in Latin American politics, democracy studies, comparative ethnic politics, and comparative social policy, and he is currently working on a book on the origins of democracy in Latin America. 

Catherine Weaver is associate dean for academic strategies and associate professor at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. She is a distinguished scholar and founder of the Next Generation Scholars Program at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law. She serves on the UT Faculty Council and previously served as chair of Graduate Assembly, member of the Faculty Council Executive Committee, and chair of the President’s Award for Global Learning Steering Committee. She previously served as LBJ’s associate dean for students and graduate advisor for the PhD and MGPS programs. She currently co-directs (with Mike Findley, Daniel Nielson, and Rachel Wellhausen) Innovations for Peace and Development, an interdisciplinary research lab devoted to alleviating global poverty and peacebuilding. Her research interests focus on transparency in international development aid, reforming global economic governance, and the politics of data.

Kurt Weyland is the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts in UT’s Government Department where he focuses on democratization and authoritarian rule, on social policy and policy diffusion, and on populism in Latin America and Europe. He has drawn on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including insights from cognitive psychology, and has done extensive field research in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela. After receiving a Staatsexamen from Johannes-Gutenberg Universitat Mainz in 1984, a MA from UT in 1986, and a PhD from Stanford University in 1991, he taught for ten years at Vanderbilt University and joined UT in 2001. He has received research support from the SSRC and NEH and has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, and at the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame. From 2001 to 2004, he served as Associate Editor of the Latin American Research Review.