Gessica de Freitas
Gessica de Freitas is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in Comparative Politics and Methods. She was awarded a Presidential Fellowship from the University. At Notre Dame, she is a Kellogg Institute for International Studies Affiliate and part of the Representation and Politics in Legislatures Lab and the Eliminating Violence Against Women Lab.
She has an MA in Political Science from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP-Brazil). Her master's thesis explores the endogenous institutional changes Brazilian parliamentarians implemented in federal legislative houses in the recent democratic period.
Her PhD dissertation explores changes in the balance of Executive-Legislative relations in Latin America, focusing on the strengthening of Congresses as legislative institutions despite a legacy of executive centralization.
She has presented her work at several conferences, such as the American, the Midwest, and the Southern Political Science Associations (APSA, MPSA, and SPSA), the Latin American Association of Political Science (ALACIP), the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and the Brazilian Association of Political Science (ABCP). She published work in the British Journal of Political Science (BJPS), the Em Sociedade, and the CAOS journals.