Principal Investigator: 
Laura R. Blume, PhD

Laura Blume earned her PhD in Political Science at Boston University in 2020 and that same year she began a position as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research and teaching interests include the war on drugs, political violence, immigration, and illicit economies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Her research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics in Latin America, NACLA Report on the Americas, and World Development.​
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The need for the VAPF dataset became apparent to Laura while she was conducting comparative ethnographic research for her dissertation in Honduras and Nicaragua. She won a 2022 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar Award to support this project.

Research Assistants

Diana Meza​
Diana Meza is an alumna of the University of Nevada, Reno where she graduated with degrees in International Affairs, Gender Race and Identity, and Professional Spanish. In recent years she has helped conduct research investigating the impact of the Violence Against Women Act on migrant women in Nevada, and communication and network development patterns among transmigrants living in the United States. She plans to attend law school in the future and focus on issues relating to human rights, immigration, and violence. Diana has worked on the VAPF project as a lead research assistant since January 2021.
Piper Heath
Piper is an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno. She began working on the VAPF project in January 2022. She subsequently won a Nevada Undergraduate Research Award (NURA) to support her continued work on the project in the summer and fall of 2022.
Lauren Harvey
Lauren Harvey is a current graduate student of Sociology at Rice University. She is a 2021 alum of the University of Nevada, Reno where she graduated with three bachelor’s degrees in Gender, Race and Identity, Spanish Literature and Culture, and International Affairs. Lauren worked on the VAPF project as a lead research assistant from January 2021 to August 2022 where she helped analyze sources and collate cases in regions of interest.
Additional Current Research Assistants:
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​Katie Sanchez Cordova, Brandon Villalpando, Amanda Vaskov
Former Research Assistants:
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​Christopher Knight, Alexa Rangel, Stephanie Yanes