Sandra Ley - Faculty

Dr. Sandra Ley is a respected expert on Political Science and the political consequences of criminal activity and has conducted extensive field work in the north and south of Mexico, collaborating closely with different organizations and sectors of civil society. Between 2023 and 2024, she was the Coordinator of the Security Program at México Evalúa, a think tank and analysis center that focuses on the evaluation and monitoring of government operations to improve the quality of its results, where she developed a series of policy reports on victimization against the business sector, violence against political figures, militarization, the prison system and crime prevention programs in Mexico.

From 2015 to 2023, she developed a productive academic career as Associate Professor in the Political Studies Division at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), with more than twenty publications in international peer-reviewed journals, focused on research on criminal violence in Mexico and its impact on political behavior. Prior to her work at CIDE, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Her work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science of the Cambridge University Press, Politics and Society, Political Behavior, Latin American Politics and Society, Latin American Research Review, and Oxford University Press, to mention a few. Among her many recognitions is the 2021 Democracy & Autocracy Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association for her book Votes, Drugs, and Violence, co-authored with Guillermo Trejo, Professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her academic articles have also been awarded by the AmericasBarometer, as well as by Comparative Political Studies and the Journal of Peace Research.

Dr. Sandra Ley joined Tecnológico de Monterrey as Distinguished Professor in Political Science for the School of Social Sciences and Government and for the School of Government and Public Transformation.

• Ph.D. in Political Science, Duke University
• M.A. in Political Science, Duke University
• B.A. in Political Science and International Relations, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas

• Ley, Sandra, Céline González, and Itzel Soto. 2024. Democracia Vulnerada: El crimen organizado en las elecciones y la administración pública en México. Data Cívica-México Evalúa-Animal Político. Mexico City. 
• Ventura, Tiago, Sandra Ley, and Francisco Cantú. 2023. “Voting for Law and Order: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in Mexico.” Comparative Political Studies, 57(4), 551-583.
• Trejo, Guillermo and Sandra Ley. 2020. Votes, Drugs, and Violence. The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico. Cambridge University Press. (2021 Democracy & Autocracy Best Book Award, APSA). 
• Ley, Sandra. 2022. “High-risk participation: Demanding peace and justice amid criminal violence.” Journal of Peace Research, 59(6), 794-809 (2022 Nils Petter Gleditsch JPR article of the Year Award).
• Altamirano, Melina, Sarah Berens, and Sandra Ley. 2020. “The Welfare State amid Crime: How Victimization and Perceptions of Insecurity Affect Social Policy Preferences in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Politics and Society 48(3), 389-422, Special issue on “Societies under Stress.” (2021 Seligson Prize from The AmericasBarometer).

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