Keynote Speakers

Assistant Professor in the Departments of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. His research and publications focus primarily on the sociolegal and criminological implications of US colonialism in Puerto Rico, elucidating how corruption and state-corporate crime exacerbates the unequal and undemocratic conditions in Puerto Rico. He has published in The Sociological Review, British Journal of Criminology, Critical Sociology, Critical Criminology, among other top academic journals. Currently, Jose is working on his book manuscript, entitled Crisis by Design: Exceptionality, Neoliberal Colonial Legality, and Legal Interruption in Puerto Rico. Thus book analyzes the role of law, the state of emergency, and anticorruption mobilization in the multilayered crisis currently engulfing Puerto Rico.

Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain. He has been a visiting researcher at Nuffield College, University of Oxford (UK), University of Toronto, Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Mexico) and University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland). He has also been Director of the training programs in International Relations and Global Communication at the Jesuit University of Madrid. He has directed and participated in the implementation of competitive projects for various international organizations such as the European Commission, the International Organization for Migration, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the EU-LAC Foundation and the Council of Europe.

Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. He has been a visiting researcher at Vanderbilt University (USA) and Trinity College, University of Dublin (Ireland). He has also been Director of the Colegio Mayor San Bartolomé of the University of Salamanca (2018-2020) and has directed and participated in the implementation of competitive projects for various international organizations such as the European Commission, the International Organization for Migration, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the EU-LAC Foundation and the Council of Europe.

is an advanced MA student in the Sociology department at The New School for Social Research in New York. He holds a BS in International Relations from the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. His research interests are in deviance studies, underground economies, and the war on drugs through historical sociology and ethnographic methods.

​Aditi is a PhD candidate in the Politics department at the New School for Social Research. Her research interests are in urban politics and urban political economy, specifically focusing on the histories of labour, state led industrialization and technology in postcolonial South Asia.

Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. As ethnographer, educator, photographer, and documentary filmmaker, he focuses on understanding how political, economic, and environmental transformation connect through people’s lives, with an empirical focus on a rural Colombian village undergoing a landmark peace process. He has published articles in leading peer-reviewed journals like Social Problems, Qualitative Sociology, Revista Maguaré and Sociological Forum (forthcoming), and is currently working on a book manuscript titled An Uncomfortable Peace.

is a researcher of the global anticorruption framework and its relation to neoliberalism and democracy. He holds a Ph.D. from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (Brazil) and has Specialization in Anticorruption and Regulatory Compliance from the University of Pennsylvania and Transparency International School on Integrity/Lithuania. He has held visiting scholar positions at the University of Chicago and Temple University.  Dr. Forattini's first book ("Demystifying the Brazilian Dictatorship and its Relationship with Mainstream Media") explores the relationship between the Brazilian dictatorship and the mainstream media, and his second book focuses on the role of humor as a vital form of resistance ("It was a coup! Humour as an Instrument of Resistance"). He has also organized two books on corruption and anti-corruption initiatives. 

Associate Professor of Economics at Dublin City University Business School and Co-Director of the DCU Anti-Corruption Research Centre (DCU ARC). His main research focus is the causes and consequences of corruption. He is a Co-PI of the Irish Research Council funded project Corruption, Gender, and Sustainable Development (COGS) and serves on the Irish Government's Advisory Council against Economic Crime and Corruption. He has published in journals such as Governance, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, Public Choice, Journal of Development Studies, and Social Science & Medicine.

PhD Candidate in Sociology and Kellogg Institute Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His research examines how elites, social movements, and civil society organizations interact to shape public policy and institutions, with a focus on right-wing advocacy. His dissertation focuses on the main causes behind the transnational expansion and uneven success of free market think tank networks in Latin America. His work has been published or is forthcoming at the American Journal of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Social Movement Studies, and Latin American Politics & Society, among other outlets.

​Assistant Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. Lee's scholarship explores how race and law shape the social logics and processes of governance in modern empires and (post)colonial states. His recent publication, “Racialized Legalities: The Rule of Law, Race, and the Protection of Women in Britain’s Crown Colonies, 1886–1890" in Law and Social Inquiry focuses on colonial officials’ invocations of the “rule of law” and the persistence of racial difference in the modern British Empire.

Mugdha is a graduate student at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Prior to this, she was working in the nonprofit global health sector and has also worked closely with the Ministry of Health in India on an ongoing national nutrition program. She is interested in health systems strengthening, particularly for reproductive, maternal and child health outcomes in South Asia. She holds a BA in Economics and Sociology, and a Masters degree in Public Policy from the National Law School, Bangalore.

Research Scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, at Brandeis University, and a consultant for Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI). Her primary research interests include policing and police reform, the politics of urban governance, corruption and illicit/ informal markets, criminal violence, and peacebuilding. She has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and a USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship, and her research has been published in Theoretical Criminology, The International Journal of Conflict Engagement and Resolution, and other journals.

holds an MA in Criminology and a PhD in Social Science and Public Policy from King’s College London. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow for the BIT-ACT (Bottom-Up Initiatives and Anti-Corruption Technologies) research project, supported by the European Research Council (ERC) and conducted at the University of Bologna. Her research interests are control of corruption, accountability, and new technologies in the context of anti-corruption, integrity, and quality of government. Before her academic career, she worked as a multimedia producer for the Brazilian desk at the BBC in London and as a reporter for daily newspapers in Brazil, where she had been dedicated to investigating and exposing political corruption.

 Dr. Pelliserry is Professor and Director of the Institute of Public Policy, National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He is a public policy specialist with an interest in distributive justice. After his doctoral studies from Oxford University, he was serving as Associate Professor at the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat. He has won the India Social Science Research award (2009) and Ram Reddy Memorial Award for Social Science (2015). His most recent edited book is Caste Matters in Public Policy (Routledge 2023)

Gustavo is a second-year Ph.D. student of Sociology at the New School for Social Research and a Fellow of its Janey Program in Latin American Studies. He holds a BA degree in Sociology and an MA degree in Social and Political Studies from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.  His research develops a figurational approach to the neoliberal era and the historical particularities of the state-making process in this period by underlining the co-evolution of the different trans-actional patterns in which the state is simultaneously embedded. Currently, Gustabo is researching the role of emerging technocracies in the Institutional Reform project in Mexico.

Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University.  He is author of Modernity's Corruption, published by Columbia University Press in 2023.  His interests include the historical sociology of corruption and colonialism, the philosophy of sociology and science, and the politics of morality. Dr. Wilson’s publications have appeared in American Journal of Sociology. Dr. Wilson is a co-founding partner of the Corruption in the Global South Research Network.

Associate Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Iowa and the Executive Director of the Corruption in the Global South Research Network. Her research explores political dimensions, gender patterns, and network properties of public sector corruption in non-democracies. Her 2017 book, The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption, was published by Cambridge University Press. More recently, Dr. Zaloznaya and her collaborators collected three rounds of public opinion surveys in Russia, China, Ukraine, and Georgia. Her work has appeared in top journals, including Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, Law & Social Inquiry, Theoretical Criminology, Electoral Studies, and others.