Yanilda María González

Yanilda María González is Assistant Professor at the School of Social Service Administration.

Her research explores the consequences of violence and inequality for state capacity, democratic citizenship, and the relationship between citizens and state institutions in the Latin American context.

González’s book manuscript, Authoritarian Coercion by Democratic Means: The Paradox of Police Reform in Latin America, probes the persistence of violent, corrupt, and unaccountable police institutions, and the political and social drivers of institutional continuity and change. Based on nearly two years of immersive qualitative field research in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, González demonstrates how patterns of human rights abuses against marginalized groups are perpetuated by, and in turn reproduce, existing societal inequalities.

She has also worked with a number of human rights organizations in the United States and Argentina, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, Abogados y Abogadas del Noroeste Argentino en Derechos Humanos y Estudios Sociales, Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género, and Asociación por los Derechos Civiles.