Kaitlyn is a PhD candidate in the Government Department. She studies Comparative Politics with a substantive focus on political violence and armed groups. Her dissertation project centers around how the local presence of organized crime affects citizens' interactions with the government in Mexico. She has conducted fieldwork in Mexico and Brazil, in addition to a project on Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the Basque region of Spain. Prior to coming to Harvard, Kaitlyn received her BA in Political Science and Spanish at Northwestern University and worked in Washington, DC at the Alliance for International Exchange.