Most of my academic career has focused on studying the right to private prosecution and Public Prosecutor's Offices in Latin America.

​My work on this topic is best summarized in my first book Prosecutorial Accountability and Victims’ Rights in Latin America (published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press). In this book I look into how private prosecution works as an accountability mechanism in Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico. Overall this book speaks to issues of legal mobilization, cause lawyering, the interactions between domestic and international law, state capacity, and rule of law.

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In 2020 my book won the Outstanding Book Award from the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Recent reviews of my book can be found here (in English, written by Dr. Diana Kapiszewski) and here (in Spanish, written by Prof. Mauricio Duce). 

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Other articles where I have explained the impact of private prosecution on human rights cases are:​​

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• (2019) “Human Rights and Post-Transitional Societies” In: The Institutions of Human Rights, edited by G. DiGiacomo and S. Kang (Toronto: University of Toronto Press)

• (2016) “Human Rights Enforcement From Below: Private Actors and Prosecutorial Momentum in Latin America and Europe” (Co-authored with G. Dancy) International Studies Quarterly.

• (2013) "Human Rights Prosecutions and the Participation Rights of Victims in Latin America"  (Co-authored with K. Sikkink) Law and Society Review. ***This paper received the 2014 Best Journal Article Award of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. This award recognizes the best journal article in the field of law and courts written by a political scientist that was published during the previous calendar year.

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I have also explained the impact that changing a legal opportunity structure can have on the litigation of femicide cases, by introducing private prosecution rights. To learn about private prosecution and the litigation of femicide cases in Mexico, read:

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• (2020) “Judicial Reform and Legal Opportunity Structure: The Emergence of Strategic Litigation Against Femicide in Mexico” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society.​​

I have always been puzzled by the question of where victims' rights come from and how these have slowly expanded around the world. From this inquiry I have written the following:

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• ​"Participating in Criminal Proceedings: A Comparative Review of 17 Latin American Countries" (forthcoming), where I describe the vast menu of participation rights that victims enjoy in criminal procedure codes around Latin America.

• "A New Institution is Born: The Victims' Defenders Office in Chile and Panama". With Sebastián Galleguillos, I wrote this chapter (forthcoming) that describes the different paths that Panama and Chile had in the the institutionalization of a Victims' Defenders Office.

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With Dr. Shannon D. Walsh, I wrote a couple of articles that evaluate the different ways in which NGOs in Central America have changed over time in their quest to protect the rights of women that are victims of gender violence.

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In our article "The Evolution of NGOs in their Quest to End Femicide in Central America" (currently under review), we ​​use interview and secondary data to describe what change over time has meant for NGOs.

 

In our article (2026) "Adaptation and Nongovernmental Organizations: An Ecological Approach for Understanding NGO–State Interactions in the Struggle to End Violence against Women​" we develop an ecological framework that brings to light that organizations can display a range of adaptive responses and engage in a different types of symbiotic interactions with the state (and other actors). In this article we demonstrate how NGOs in Central America have engaged in different morphological and behavioral responses, as NGOs have had to learn to work closely with, within, against, and beyond the state to continue their mission of ending violence against women.

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