Camilla Reuterswaerd
Position title: Ph.D. Candidate | Comparative Politics
Email: reuterswaerd@wisc.edu
Research Interests:
Legislative institutions, Social Policy, Gender, party politics, Latin America, Social Movements
About
Camilla Reuterswaerd is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science. Her research centers on legislative institutions, social policy and the Catholic Church in Latin America, with a particular focus on gender and politics. Her dissertation project, “Exchanging Legitimacy, Preserving Hegemony: Party Competition, the Catholic Church and Gender Policy in Mexico” analyzes Latin America’s puzzling variation in reproductive health and family policy through an empirical focus on subnational Mexico. While previous scholarship emphasizes the role of left parties, Church-state relations and women’s movements in policy liberalizations, her dissertation shows that electoral competition and party type interacts with the relation between the Catholic Church and political parties to generate variation in abortion and same-sex policy. The dissertation contributes insights into the unexplored party side of gender policy reforms as well as contemporary Church-state relations in Latin America.
Camilla completed twelve months of dissertation fieldwork in Mexican states in the fall of 2016. She carried out field research in the capitals of four states—Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Yucatán and Mexico City. Camilla has previously conducted field research in Montevideo, Uruguay. A paper focusing on the party determinants of Uruguay’s legalization of abortion in 2012 is currently under review.
In addition to gender and politics in Latin America broadly construed, Camilla’s research interests include the role of religious institutions in political life, social movements and topics related to gender-based violence.
Camilla holds a B.A. in Development Studies from the Department of Government at Uppsala University and a Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in Development and Change.
Dissertation
Awards
2017-2018
Mellon-Wisconsin Summer Scholarship
2017
Selected as one of the Graduate Fellows at the UW Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies Law and Society
Hyde dissertation award from the Gender and Women’s Studies Department
2015
UW Madison Global Health Institute Graduate Student Research Award