05.10.2023 Welcome at the Center for Conflict Studies, Letícia Barbabela!

Letícia obtained her PhD from the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin in Ireland. Prior to that, Letícia was a civil servant working for the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She also earned a master’s degree in public policy from Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy and a law degree from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. Her research interests encompass corruption, inequality, and distributive politics. She is particularly intrigued by how corruption shapes citizens' attitudes towards public institutions, by how politicians respond to demands from different socioeconomic groups, and by informal rules guiding government resource allocation.
Letícia's doctoral research focused on how citizens perceive and respond to anti-corruption efforts led by public institutions, such as corruption court cases, bribery-reporting channels, and audit programs. Her goal was to understand whether these efforts rebuild trust in public institutions or inadvertently erode citizens' political efficacy. Her PhD project involved using public opinion survey data from international survey projects like Afrobarometer, Latinobarometro, and the Americas Barometer, and she employed quantitative methods, including a survey experiment and a natural experiment.
Her current main research project is about political inequality. Alongside Miquel Pellicer and Eva Wegner, she serves as one of the principal investigators of the DFG project "Unequal Democracy in Brazil and South Africa." Focusing on two highly economically unequal countries, the project aims to answer questions such as the extent of political inequality at the national, local, and individual levels, the primary drivers of political inequality, and the contextual factors influencing local variations in political inequality. The project involves extensive data collection, including administrative data from both countries, an original citizen survey, and fieldwork.
As a member of the Inequality and Distributive Politics research team at Marburg University, Letícia participates in the bi-weekly edition of the IDP research digest. Letícia is also part of the Marburg team in the VW Foundation project "Politicians, Policies, and the Reproduction of Wealth," which aims to examine the role of MP characteristics in shaping policies that may systematically favor the wealthy in various democracies, particularly in the UK, Germany, Brazil, and South Africa.
Her work has been featured in journals such as Governance and Government & Opposition, as well as publications like the World Bank Legal Review.

We are very pleased to welcome Letícia Barbabela to the Center for Conflict Studies.