Viri Rios

I belong to an emerging generation of scholars that rejects the commonly accepted idea that academia is inexorably detached from policy decisions and social mobilization.    Instead, I rely on data analysis, research journalism, and close collaboration with academic peers, to advance an acute understanding of the pressing social problems of Mexico, my home country, and to encourage and publicize inadvertent solutions to them.

Using experimental and observational data, I analyze Mexico's political and economic reality, as well as its main challenges: economic inequality, political corruption, and criminal violence. I have published several peer-review papers at journals like The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, Justice Quarterly, Latin American Research Review, Latin American Politics and Society, an edited book entitled #TheMissingReform about Rule of Law in Mexico. As professor, I teach public policy at Harvard Summer School and have been visiting assistant professor at Harvard and Purdue University.

In 2020, I was honored to be selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. I am also a fellow at the International's Women's Forum, and in 2018 I was a selection commissioner of Mexic's National Anti-Corruption System -- a position awarded to top-academics and activists by the Mexican Senate. The Library of Congress classified my work as "Latin America Editor's Pick" and The Economist profiled me as a “mover and shaker” of Mexico's civil society. In 2014, the American Political Science Association awarded me the prize to the best public administration dissertation, and a year before the Harvard Gazette selected me as one of the 15 Harvard’s stellar graduates.

Besides my labor as academic, I regularly collaborate with top political leaders, helping them identify, measure and expose counter-intuitive policy truths using data. I have briefed the Mexican President’s Spokesman, and advised the Minister of Finance and the President of one of the largest business organizations in Mexico. I was also the founding CEO of México ¿Cómo Vamos?, a start-up think tank, and of ¿Fuiste Tu? (Was it you?) a research collective that uses data analysis to identify cases of corruption in social programs in Mexico. 

I am a columnist at El País, and I also write at Expansion -- one of Mexico's leading business magazines. Regularly, I share my analysis of Mexican politics with The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other international and mexican media.