Welcome!  I am an Associate Professor of Government at Colby College.  My research and teaching interests include citizen participation in the policymaking process, social-citizenship rights, social policy, urban governance, and institutional change, with a regional focus on Latin America.  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 engaged in research 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. In 2020, I received the Clarence Stone Scholar Award by the APSA Urban and Local Politics section. 

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.