Summary
Laura Blume is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work focuses on issues of human security, with a regional focus in Latin America. Her teaching and research interests include the war on drugs, violence, illicit economies, immigration and democratization throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. She is currently working on a book project that uses comparative ethnography to examine the ways in which political context impacts drug-trafficking violence in Central America. Her work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics in Latin America, NACLA Report on the Americas, and World Development. She won a 2022 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar Award for her project, “Cataloguing Murder: Tracking Violence Against Public Figures in Central America.”
Research interests
- Comparative politics
- Human security
- Organized crime
- Gangs
- Corruption
- Central America
- Mexico
Courses taught
- PSC 405F: Problems of World Politics
- PSC 211: Introduction to Comparative Politics
- PSC 407E/607E: Political Systems of Latin America
- PSC 407Q/607Q: Political Violence
- PSC 403Z: Special Topics in Public Policy & Public Administration (The U.S. War on Drugs)
Education
- Ph.D., Political Science, Boston University, 2020
- B.A., Political Science, Simmons College, 2013