Angie Torres-Beltran

Overview

My dissertation develops a novel framework for understanding state responses to gender-based violence and the consequences thereof on women’s political development and notions of justice. 

For the 2023-2024 academic year, Angie will be a USIP Peace Scholar, a Research Fellow with the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California-San Diego, and Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Her research explores the ways in which women politically respond to gender-based violence. Her work has been supported by the American Political Science Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Empirical Study of Gender Research Network. Angie holds a MA in Government from Cornell University and BA in International and Global Studies from the University of Central Florida.

Research Focus

My dissertation develops a novel framework for understanding gendered state states to gender-based violence and the consequences thereof on women’s political development and notions of justice. In the first part, I examine the dynamic, two-fold effect that gender-based violence has on women’s political participation and the moderating role that revictimization by public-facing bureaucrats plays in the process. In the second part, I examine the historical development of gendered state institutions, emphasizing how political parties and bureaucracies maintain and reproduce gendered institutions for the purposes of maintaining power. In the third part, I explore the reimagination of justice in these contexts, centering women’s belief about shared responsibility among citizens, civil society, and the state in the provision of justice and other public goods and services. To assess these claims, my research utilizes a mixed, multi-method analysis of historical and contemporary Mexico. I leverage both quantitative and qualitative data from 10 months of field research, including novel administrative datasets on crime reports, women’s electoral turnout, and women’s protests at the municipal level between 2015 and 2021 (N=16,654), nationally-representative survey experiments (n=1,200), participation observation, historical case studies, and 60 interviews with national, state, and municipal-level activists, bureaucrats, experts, members of civil society organizations, and victims.