Emily Elia
PhD Candidate - Rice University
Welcome to my website! I am a PhD candidate at Rice University in the Department of Political Science. I study comparative politics with a substantive focus on mass and elite political behavior and institutions and a regional focus on Latin America. My current research explores electoral accountability and candidate evaluation in contexts of corruption.
Please see my CV, Research, Dissertation, and Teaching pages for more information about my work.
You can contact me at ete2@rice.edu.
Please see my CV, Research, Dissertation, and Teaching pages for more information about my work.
You can contact me at ete2@rice.edu.
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My research examines electoral accountability and candidate evaluation in contexts of corruption, primarily in Latin American democracies. More specifically, my dissertation investigates strategies that political elites use to evade electoral accountability and maintain voter support in the face of corruption accusations. I argue that political elites have various strategies at their disposal to convince voters to stick with them in contexts of corruption. I investigate three elite strategies for evading accountability: competency compensation, feminization, and anticorruption appeals. To study these strategies, I use novel methodological techniques including survey experiments, statistical analyses of observational data, and qualitative data from elite and expert interviews. In another line of research, I study how the dynamics of the electoral environment make voters more or less likely to engage in electoral accountability against incumbents perceived to be corrupt.
My teaching experience is closely related to my research expertise. At Rice, I have taught Latin America Politics as an independent course, and in Spring 2024, I will be teaching a second independent course, Corruption in Politics. In all my classes, my approach to teaching centers on developing students’ critical thinking skills and confidence. I foster an inclusive environment where students learn how to think about the political world like scientists. As part of my graduate training, I completed an accredited professional Certificate of Teaching and Learning at Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). |
Within the Rice community, I currently serve as the Political Science Graduate Student Liaison for the Center for Teaching Excellence. I also serve as a Graduate Student Ambassador for the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office and am a member of the Ambassador Leadership Council. I am a co-founder and former president of the Political Science Graduate Student Association at Rice. I have also worked as the research assistant for the Women in Legislative Studies professional organization since 2021.
In 2018, I completed my BA in both Political Science and Spanish at The University of Alabama. At Alabama, I was also a member of the Honors College and the Blount Scholars Program, an interdisciplinary liberal arts minor and living-learning center. During my undergraduate degree, I worked as a classroom aid in local elementary schools, primarily teaching English to ESL students. Originally, I am from Massachusetts.
In 2018, I completed my BA in both Political Science and Spanish at The University of Alabama. At Alabama, I was also a member of the Honors College and the Blount Scholars Program, an interdisciplinary liberal arts minor and living-learning center. During my undergraduate degree, I worked as a classroom aid in local elementary schools, primarily teaching English to ESL students. Originally, I am from Massachusetts.
Rice University
Department of Political Science, MS-24
6100 Main Street
Houston, TX 77005
ete2@rice.edu
Department of Political Science, MS-24
6100 Main Street
Houston, TX 77005
ete2@rice.edu
All photos on this site were taken by me during fieldwork in Argentina.