Summary
Laura Blume is an associate professor of Political Science and a faculty affiliate of the Gender, Race, and Identity (GRI) program at the University of Nevada, Reno. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Boston University in 2020 and started working at the University of Nevada, Reno that same year.
Her first book, The Art of Trafficking: How Politics Shape Narco-Strategies and Violence in Central America, uses comparative ethnography to examine the ways in which political contexts influence drug traffickers’ operational strategies and trafficking-related violence in Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The Art of Trafficking was published in December 2025 with Oxford University Press. Laura's research has also been published in Comparative Political Studies, Geoforum, Political Geography, World Development, as well as other outlets, and she frequently contributes to NACLA.
In 2022, Laura won a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar Award for the Violence Against Public Figures (VAPF) project, which is compiling a comprehensive dataset of all politicians, members of the media, judicial officials, activists and community leaders who have been assassinated in Central America since 2008.
Laura is currently working on new or ongoing research projects related to violence against public figures, the consequences of counternarcotics militarization in Indigenous and Afro-Descendant territories, gender dynamics in illicit drug markets, and more.
Research interests
- The War on Drugs
- Illicit economies
- Political violence
- Criminal governance
- Corruption
- Central America
- State violence
- Immigration
- Ethnography
Courses taught
- PSC 211: Introduction to Comparative Politics
- PSC 403Q/603Q: The Drug War
- PSC 403Z: Special Topics in Public Policy & Public Administration
- PSC 405F: Problems of World Politics
- PSC 407E/607E: Political Systems of Latin America
- PSC 407Q/607Q: Political Violence
- PSC 408F/608F: Border Politics
- PSC 781: Political Science as a Discipline (Research Design)
- PSC 784: Qualitative Research Methods
Selected publications
- Blume, L., Vargas Castro, Y., & Sánchez Torres, M. (2026). The Violent Legacies Haunting Contemporary Guatemala. NACLA Report on the Americas.
- Blume, L., Sauls, L. A., & Galeana, F. (2026). Militarized Margins: Counternarcotics Policy and the Struggle for Territorial Governance in Central America. Geoforum.
- Blume, L. & Sauls, L. A. (2025). An Absurd New Chapter in the "War on Drugs." NACLA Report on the Americas.
- Blume, L. & Storm, A. (2025). U.S. Government Eliminates Legal Protections for Honduran Women. NACLA Report on the Americas.
- Blume, L. R. (2025). The Art of Trafficking: How Politics Shape Narco-Strategies and Violence in Central America. Oxford University Press.
- Blume, L. (2024). Honduras: A Narco-State Made in the United States. NACLA Report on the Americas.
- Blume, L., Hernández, V., Meza, D., & Weitzel, V. (2024). “Dying for Justice in Central America." NACLA Report on the Americas 56(3).
- Blume, L. (2022). Collusion, Cooptation, or Evasion: The Politics of Drug Trafficking Violence in Central America. Comparative Political Studies.
- Blume, L. R., Sauls, L. A., & Knight, C. A. (2022). Tracing Territorial-Illicit Relations: Pathways of Influence and Prospects for Governance. Political Geography, 97.
- Blume, L. (2021). Narco Robin Hoods: Community Support for Illicit Economies and Violence in Rural Central America. World Development 143: 105464.
Education
- Ph.D., Political Science, Boston University, 2020
- B.A., Political Science, Simmons College, 2013