LUISA GODINEZ PUIG 
 

I am an Equity Scholar and Research Associate at Urban Institute. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science in the fall of 2021 and my MA in Political Science in 2019, both at Boston University . I also completed an LLM degree at the University of Chicago in 2015 and a law degree (J.D. equivalent) from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 2011. Before starting my PhD, I worked as a research consultant for the Organization of American States (2012-2014) and the InterAmerican Development Bank (2015-2016), both in Washington D.C.  

​

For my PhD, I explored the influence of Federalism on local governments. For this, I studied various instances of local power restriction, as well as examples of local empowerment of Municipal Governments. In the first two papers of my dissertation, I analyzed the politics and causal effects of Municipal incorporations. The last paper studies how the structure of federalism has influenced the fluctuation of state preemption laws in the U.S.

During the spring and summer of 2019, I was the Doctoral Fellow at the Initiative on Cities from Boston University. Subsequently, during the fall and spring of 2019-2020, I was awarded the Whitney Young Jr. Fellowship. In 2020 I also worked with the Government of Boston to evaluate a civic engagement and leadership course for immigrants in the city. During the summer of 2021, I was selected to be Assistant Project Manager for Racial Data and Policy at the Center for Antiracist Research at BU. During that summer, I also taught an undergraduate class on local politics. I have published articles at the Journal of Electoral Studies, Urban Affairs Review, Ethnopolitics, Public Health Review and the Monkey Cage Blog of the Washington Post. And I have also co-authored various policy reports.