Dr Nelson Ruiz

Biography

Welcome to my website. I am a Senior Lecturer (≈ Associate Professor) and Head of the Political Economy Research Division at the Government Department at the University of Essex. I am also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE Government Department, an Associate Member at Nuffield College University of Oxford, an Associate Member at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), and a Research Associate at Oxford's Latin American Centre. Before, I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Lecturer at DPIR/Oxford and a Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow at Nuffield College. Before that, I was a post-doctoral researcher at ETH-Zurich Public Policy Group (Chair: Dominik Hangartner), a fellow at Harvard-IQSS, and I was part of the Visiting Scholars Program at NYU-Politics department. I completed my PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science. My research interests are in the political economy of development. Within this field, the main topic I am interested in is the role of money in politics. I am also interested in studying corruption and political selection. My research involves the use of causal inference methods and some data science tools. Before academia, I worked at the Inter-American Development Bank as a research fellow evaluating development projects in the field across Latin America.

Qualifications

• PhD London School of Economics, (2018)

Appointments

University of Essex

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Government at the University of Essex. (1/10/2022 - 1/10/2024)