Brazil Under Lula 2.0

This panel will discuss Brazil under Lula's current term and the status of Brazilian politics after the 2024 mid-term elections. Scholars from around the world will contribute their perspectives in an engaging and lively discussion.

Speakers:

Nara Pavão, Associate Professor of Political Science, UFPE

David Samuels, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota

Timothy J. Power, Head of the Social Sciences Division and Professor, University of Oxford

Moderated by Frances Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government, Harvard University

About the Speakers

Nara Pavão, is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil. Her research centers on the intersections of political behavior, public opinion, and comparative politics. It explores how individuals engage with information about the political world, develop perspectives on pertinent issues, and ultimately navigate decision-making processes within politics. She is particularly interested in understanding how electoral accountability works. She is currently working on research projects related to misinformation, public opinion, and corruption. My primary region of interest is Latin America, with particular emphasis on Brazil. I am a member of the EGAP network and She is also interested in experimental research design and survey methods. She has conducted survey experiments in countries such as Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, and the United States. My work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, and Latin American Politics and Society. She has a co-authored book published by Cambridge University Press (2023) that examines the causes and consequences of anti-corruption judicial crusades in Latin America. I received a PhD in Political Science (Comparative Politics) from the University of Notre Dame (2015). During the 2015–2016 academic year, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) at Vanderbilt University. Prior to attending Notre Dame, she earned a masters degree in Political Science at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and a BA from the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), and she was an exchange student at the University of Texas at Austin.

David Samuels (PhD, UCSD 1998) is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book, with Cesar Zucco Jr., is Partisans, Antipartisans and Non-Partisans: Voting Behavior in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2018). His book Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach (with Ben Ansell) (Cambridge University Press, 2014), won the American Political Science Association's Merze Tate – Elinor Ostrom Outstanding Book Award for "best book on politics, government, or international affairs," as well as the William H. Riker best book prize from the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association. Professor Samuels currently serves as co-editor of Comparative Political Studies.

Timothy Power is a comparative political scientist with a deep commitment to interdisciplinary area studies. Tim is currently the Head of the Social Science Division at the University of Oxford, where he is responsible for the management and academic leadership of the Division, maintaining and developing the international reputation of Social Sciences as a centre of excellence in both research and teaching. Tim arrived in Oxford in 2005 to take up a joint appointment in Area Studies and the Department of Politics. From 2008 to 2012 he directed the Latin American Centre, and he became Head of the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) in 2018. Tim's research concerns democratization and political institutions (parties, legislatures, and elections) in modern Latin America, especially Brazil. With Cesar Zucco (Fundacao Getulio Vargas), and also co-directs the Brazilian Legislative Surveys, which have recorded the opinions of Brazilian politicians in every parliament elected since 1990. Tim has been working with several colleagues on the challenges of coalition government in presidential systems.

About the Moderator

Frances Hagopian is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer for Brazil Studies in the Department of Government. She is author of Reorganizing Representation in Latin America (forthcoming), editor of Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America (2009), co-editor (with Scott Mainwaring) of The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America (2005), and author of Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (1996) and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She previously taught at the University of Notre Dame, where she was Director of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies. She has also been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford. She teaches courses on Brazilian and Latin American politics and on research design and qualitative and mixed methods.

Presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.