Biography

Rachel Schwartz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. Beginning in Fall 2020, she will be an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Otterbein University.

Rachel’s research focuses on the legacies of armed conflict, state building, corruption, and institutional change in Central America. Her book manuscript in-progress, titled Constructing the Criminal State: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America, examines how conflict dynamics can introduce alternative, often predatory rules within the state apparatus, which undermine political and economic development well into times of peace. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright IIE Program and the United States Institute for Peace, as well as UW-Madison’s Institute for Legal Studies, Institute for Regional and International Studies, and Political Science Department.

Rachel’s work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, Qualitative and Multi-Methods Research, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, NACLA Report on the Americas, Americas Quarterly, and World Politics Review. She previously worked at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC, coordinating programs and publications on citizen security and migration in Central America and Mexico and Congressional outreach. Rachel received her B.A. in Political Science from Haverford College in 2011.