Diana Isabel Güiza Gómez
Fields of Study: Comparative Politics, Methodology
Areas of Interest: Rural-poor mobilization, land redistribution, peacebuilding
Diana Isabel Güiza-Gómez is pursuing a joint Ph.D. in Political Science and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and affiliated to the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Violence and Transitional Justice Lab. Her research agenda involves rural-poor mobilization for land reform, economic redistribution in civil war political settlements, transitional justice, and constitution-making.
By diving into contemporary Colombian history, her doctoral research investigates under what conditions rural-poor movements forge economic redistribution (e.g., land reform) via civil war political settlements. More specifically, it examines why rural-poor mobilization engages in varying levels of radicalism in claim-making at the subnational level and why some forms of rural-poor mobilization succeed in bringing about economic redistribution during civil war political transitions while others fail to accomplish so. Her project maps onto subnational ecologies of contention over resources in wartime and their impacts on repertoires of rural-poor mobilization and demand content during peace junctures. It also explains why and how rural-poor mobilization triggers radical rural change in civil war political transitions. In doing so, it offers a novel account for rural-poor movements as main driving forces behind redistributive turns in peacebuilding.
Diana Isabel holds a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Arts in Law from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a Bachelor of Laws from Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. Previously, she was a researcher at the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia) and a lecturer at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is a Fulbright-Minciencias grantee (2019 to 2023), a Presidential Fellow (2019 to 2024), and was awarded a Darby Fellowship for the 2019 to 2020 academic year.