About

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame.

My research interests focus on understanding the micro-foundations and dynamics of political and criminal violence in Latin America. Why are some countries ravaged by high levels of political and organized crime violence? What are the paths for building safer, more peaceful and democratic countries? These are the core questions guiding my research interests.

I address this agenda with a solid quantitative toolset including quasi-experimental and experimental techniques, natural language processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), Large Language Models (LLMs), and geographic information systems (GIS).

Rather than using generic LLMs, my work on Computatoinal Social Science tools focuses on developing cyber-infrastructure and applications specialized for political science research.

My fieldwork experience primarily focuses on Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Check out my research.

Check out my Google Scholar.

Teaching

Rec Letters

If you want to request a recommendation letter from me, please be advised that I take these requests seriously as both our reputations are at stake. Strong letters of recommendation usually are the product of long and close relationships with faculty, so consider whether I am the most appropriate individual to ask for a letter.

I generally write a recommendation letter for students who:

  • Took at least one course with me.
  • Excelled in the course with a final grade "A".
  • Worked with me as a research assistant at least one semester with good performance.

When requesting a recommendation letter, please consider the following procedure:

  • Discuss with me the recommendation request before sending me the auto-generated email from the program you are applying for.
  • Make a recommendation letter request by email at least three weeks in advance.
  • Include the following information in a single email.
    1. Updated CV.
    2. Your transcripts and GPA.
    3. Relevant documents such as a statement of purpose or application letter.
    4. A brief description of the program, job, institution to which I will be addressing the letter. Include links with relevant information.
    5. A note with suggestions of what I should emphasize in the letter.

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Graduate Courses

  • Micro-dynamics of Political and Criminal Violence
    • This seminar aims at exposing graduate students to the state-of-the-art research on political and organized criminal violence. To do so, the seminar has a deliberate interdisciplinary approach integrating scholarship on conflict, economics, geography, political psychology, and criminology to disentangle the micro-dynamics of political violence and organized crime. The micro-dynamic approach of this seminar will largely depart from country-year unit of analysis and dive into the subnational or individual level of analysis. At the seminar, we will engage in a collective intellectual endeavor to analyze each assigned reading in depth. The discussions will pay particular attention on the theoretical and conceptual contributions and debates, as well as on the empirical innovations and identification strategies in the field. These discussions will help graduate students to identify gaps in the literature as well as emerging niches that might motivate their own research agenda.
  • Panel Data
    • Political Scientists across subfi elds require analyzing and explaining the behavior of several units of analysis over time. These could be individuals, countries, municipalities, institutions, groups, rms, etc. that display di erent behavioral trends over time and across space. This course o ers graduate students the opportunity to develop methodological skills for understanding and performing quantitative analyses of time series cross-sectional (TSCS) data, also known as panel data. The topics covered in this course include the speci cation, estimation, evaluation, and inference of xed and random e ects models for continuous, categorical, and count data in time series cross-sectional studies. The basic model speci cation will be extended to more advanced methods such as dynamic models, instrumental variables, generalized method of moments, and spatial econometric models for panel data.
  • LaTex crash course
    • This hands-on workshop is designed to introduce graduate students to the use of LaTeX editor. After successfully completing this workshop, students will be able to (i) write their own academic papers using LaTeX, and (ii) develop their own academic presentation slides using LaTeX.

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Undergraduate Courses

  • Crime Reduction: What Works?
    • This course introduces students to the study of crime control policies, examining the scientific foundations of crime studies as well as policy evaluation in the security sector. It provides an overview of the evidence on the effectiveness of various crime control policies using a comparative perspective that integrates evidence on security policies implemented in the US and Latin America.
  • Violent Crime and Political Order
    • This course explores the intriguing politics of law enforcement and organized crime from a political- economy perspective. The course will help students to develop analytical skills to understand the root causes of political repression and organized criminal violence, and to critically assess the e ectiveness of law enforcement e orts. The course has a comparative perspective with a particular emphasis on Latin America. The course is divided into ve main sections. The rst part overviews theoretical foundations highlighting the di erences and similarities of political and criminal order from a critical perspec- tive. The second part analyzes the empirical and political challenges of measuring crime and illicit markets, and covers crime trends in the U.S. The third section analyzes illicit markets from an economic perspective. The fourth segment addresses ongoing issues related to policing in the U.S. The fth segment surveys the historical origins of the drug control regime in Latin America and explores the causes and e ects of drug violence in the region.

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Previous Courses

  • Politics of International Security
    • The second half of the twentieth century has been marked by violence, bloodshed, and political upheaval. The primary source of this wave of violence is not international warfare between rival states, but internal political violence affecting a variety of governments across the globe. This course is designed to introduce students to the comparative study of civil wars. The objective of the course is devoted to understanding (1) key social, economic and political causes of civil war onset; (2) identifying the main tendencies in the conduct of civil wars; and (3) gaining factual knowledge about specific case studies. The course will cover topics such as the onset of civil wars, natural resources, political instability, recruitment strategies, rebel organization, child soldiering, lethality and tactics of violence, duration and termination. At the end of this course, students will have a solid understanding of the determinants and characteristics of civil wars from a comparative perspective. The course is structured as a seminar, and we will engage in a collective and critical discussion about the main findings, debates, strengths and limitations of different ideas and methodologies for studying civil war.
  • Colloquium on Research in Government and Politics
    • This course offers the opportunity for students to design and conduct their own independent research. As such, this course inverts the traditional instructor-student relationship. Instead of the professor being the main driver of the learning experience, students are expected to take the lead in their own learning and research process while the professor serves as a guide. The readings and assignments will guide the students through the challenges of formulating analytical research questions, proposing plausible arguments, evaluating scholarly research, developing concepts, identifying valid ways to measure them and assessing the advantages and limitations of different methodological approaches. Since both the policy and academic sectors rely heavily on quantitative analysis to support their claims and engage in evidence-based debates, this course will help students to acquire skills to conduct and interpret basic quantitative research. The final research paper will demonstrate the student's familiarity with relevant literature in the subfield, capability to engage in relevant academic or policy debates, mastery of basic concepts in the discipline, competence in advancing convincing explanations and providing solid empirical support, and capability to communicate effectively.
  • International Crime and Justice - Capstone Seminar
    • This course will synthesize the knowledge and perfect the skills gained throughout Masters coursework and allow students to compare and contrast the multidisciplinary perspectives gained throughout their studies. A core component of the course consists of conducting a series of quantitative studies on criminal behavior using data from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The research will concentrate on the following topics: comparative correlates of crime, homicides, criminal victimization, political institutions and economic indicators. In addition to a final academic paper, students will produce evidence-based policy briefs to be presented to UNODC officials.
  • Politics of Transnational Crime - Research Intensive
    • This course offers students the opportunity to explore the intriguing world of transnational organized crime from a rigorous methodological perspective combined with solid theoretical foundations. With a particular focus on drug-trafficking organizations in Latin America, the course will help students to develop analytical skills and acquire practical research experience in order to identify main trends and causes of drug-trafficking in the region. The course is divided in two sections. The first part overviews the main theoretical foundations and discusses key empirical challenges for analyzing transnational organized crime. The second section explores the characteristics and causes of drug trafficking in Latin America. In addition to acquiring substantive knowledge on the topic and on the region, this course includes a research component. As part of the course activities, we will build a database of the territorial presence of drug trafficking organizations in Latin America. To conduct this task, students will learn how to use specialized software for gathering, reformatting, and processing textual information from news reports in order to extract numeric data for quantitative analysis. This course is possible thanks to the support of the Research Intensive Course Design Award of the Office of Undergraduate Research.
  • Introduction to Comparative Politics
    • This course provides a broad overview of the main theoretical approaches in the subfield of comparative politics by focusing on important substantive questions about the world. The course is organized around six key questions. First, how can we understand the world from a comparative perspective? Second, how do nation states emerge? Third, why are there different types of political regimes? Fourth, what are the different types of political institutions in modern democracies? Fifth, why do people organize along social, ethnic or political identities? Sixth, why do people challenge the established political order? The course will expose students to the main theoretical arguments and debates answering these questions. In addition, the course assignments will allow students to gain substantive knowledge about specific cases.

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Contact

Email: josorio1(at)arizona.edu

  • University of Arizona
  • School of Government and Public Policy
  • Office 315
  • 1145 E South Campus Dr
  • Tucson, AZ 85719

Phone: 520-621-4607

Research

Research Teams

I have been able to participate as PI or Co-PI in three major collaborative research projects:

Infrastructure For Political and Social Event Data

  • This project contributes to the computerized extraction of conflict event data at a global scale.
  • Collaborators: Patrick T. Brandt, Vito D'Orazio, and Latifur Khan.
  • Funding: NSF (1539302, 1931541, 220162, 2311142).

Armed Governance

  • This project uses online expert sureys to gather systematic data on armed governance in Mexico, Colombia, and Afghanistan.
  • Collaborators: Desmond Arias and Harold Trinkunas.
  • Funding: DoD Minerva (71623-LS-MRI) and NSF (2116406).

Academy for Security Analysis

  • This large project ($US5M) consisted on training government agencies and civil society organizations from Hondruas, Guatemala, and El Salvador on implementing Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) to assess the impact of public policies in the security and justice sectors..
  • Collaborators: Michael Weintraub, Andres Ham, and Reynaldo Rojo.
  • Funding: USAID (519-15-000001).
  • The project's website is no longer available due to the dismanteling of USAID.

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Refereed Journal Articles

Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications

Book Chapters

Unrefereed Manuscripts

Commissioned Policy Reports

Software

My software and Large Language Models (LLMs) are publicly available in GitHub and Hugging Face.