The Department of Government and Politics (GVPT) is excited to welcome two exceptional new faculty members for the 2024–25 academic year! 

Assistant Professor Giancarlo Visconti, GVPT

Giancarlo Visconti is an Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Visconti received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Visconti grew up in the south of Chile and completed undergraduate studies at Universidad Católica de Chile.

Visconti studies comparative political behavior and the political economy of developing countries, particularly in Latin America. Visconti is especially interested in topics related to crime, migration, and political attitudes.

Visconti's work focuses on using and advancing methods for drawing causal inferences from experimental and observational data.

Visconti's research has been published, or is forthcoming, in the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, and Electoral Studies, among other outlets. Visconti will be teaching courses on causal inference and advanced quantitative methods.

Assistant Professor Alejandro (Alex) Flores, GVPT

Flores' research employs a wide range of quantitative/qualitative methods and data sources to examine how people's past experiences with government shape their ability to relate to, access, receive care from, or feel understood by government. Alongside his own scholarly pursuits, Alex will also focus his efforts in collaborative roles with the GVPT Research Lab and the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement to further give nuance to how inclusivity in American politics functions in practice. 

Alex earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before joining UMD, he was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab. He is a first-generation scholar and a former Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. His investigative advances were made possible by the support of the Social Science Research Council, the School of Humanities, Arts, and the National Science Foundation. This work has appeared in Journal of Political Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and has been featured on NPR and Bloomberg News.

Read more here: Meet BSOS' New Teachers and Researchers