María Ballesteros

Welcome!

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Government at Harvard University, and a 2024-2025 Minerva/Peace Scholar, jointly supported by the United States Institute of Peace and the Minerva Research Initiative at the US Department of Defense.  At Harvard, I am an affiliate to the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, as well as a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Prize Fellow. 

My research focuses on the political economy of conflict, post-conflict reconstruction, and migration. I study the strategies regimes use to consolidate control during and after internal conflict, and how these strategies shape long-term trajectories of stability and development. My work employs a range of methods, with a particular emphasis on design-based causal inference, spatial analysis, and analysis of large-scale data.

In addition to USIP and the US Department of Defense, my research has been funded by The Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network, as well as IQSS and the Weatherhead Center, among others. In 2022, I received the Department of Government's Research Award in Race, Ethnicity, Migration, and Politics. My work has been covered in outlets such as The New York Times and Foreign Policy.