Welcome!  I am an Associate Professor of Government and Chair of Latin American Studies at Colby College.  My book, Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2019), examines the divergent trajectories of nationally mandated participatory institutions in Brazil and Colombia. I am currently working on projects analyzing the politics of urban security interventions and the rights of marginalized groups; rights-based policy reforms of child welfare systems in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia; and grassroots mobilization by right-wing movements. I am member of the editorial committee of the journal Comparative Politics, responsible for manuscripts on Latin America.

Prior to coming to Colby, I was a Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.  I completed my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley’s Travers Department of Political Science, an M.P.P. from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College, where I was a first-generation-to-college student.

You can reach me at LRMayka [AT] colby.edu or on Twitter @Lindsay Mayka.