Flávia Batista da Silva, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government and Politics (GVPT), has been awarded the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship. This highly competitive award supports outstanding doctoral students by providing a $15,000 stipend, a candidacy tuition award, and coverage of mandatory fees for one semester—allowing recipients to devote full attention to their dissertation research.

Flávia’s dissertation, Impeachment by Popular Demand: Analyzing Citizens’ Decision-Making on Presidential Impeachment, examines a growing trend in Latin America: the increasing involvement of ordinary citizens in using and misusing presidential impeachment. Her research addresses a critical gap in political science by focusing on the role of citizens in political accountability and democratic resilience.

Inspired by political developments in her home country of Brazil—where over 400 impeachment requests have been filed since 1990, over 70% initiated by individuals or grassroots groups—Flávia explores the “culture of impeachment.” Her work raises important questions about how citizen-driven accountability can strengthen democratic institutions and how impeachment risks becoming a partisan or performative tool without clear legal justification.

“Democracy is what drew me to political science,” she explains. “But I began to realize that much of the literature focuses on elites—how they undermine democracy. I want to know more about citizens and how they can both defend and destabilize democratic systems.”

Using a mixed-methods approach—including survey experiments, qualitative interviews, and text analysis—her research investigates when and why citizens view impeachment as legitimate and what factors influence their support for removing elected leaders. Her findings have important implications for democratic stability, political communication, and the challenges posed by misinformation.

Beyond her research, Flávia is deeply committed to teaching. Last fall, she taught International Political Relations at UMD and found a profound sense of purpose in the classroom.

“I want to be the kind of professor who prioritizes teaching, who helps build better, more informed citizens,” she says. “That’s how we stop democratic erosion: through education.”

The Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship brings her one step closer to that goal, supporting her timely, impactful research and her mission to inform, inspire, and educate the next generation of scholars and citizens.