Allison Pessôa ’28 is a Global Affairs major with plans to add Political Science and Marketing to her academic program, originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, but with familial and cultural ties to Northeastern Brazil. Pessôa’s research interests center on poverty reduction and global economic equity in Latin America and the lusophone world, with particular attention to how economic inequality and political institutions shape opportunity for communities, including women, children, and families, and how legal empowerment and development policy can expand access to justice.
Pessôa is currently beginning an independent research project on the long term effects of Portuguese language and colonial legacies across Latin America, Europe, and Africa, with a focus on how these histories relate to intergenerational poverty and unequal development outcomes. Drawing on applied experience from legal empowerment work in Honduras in May 2025 alongside local leaders and attorneys, Pessôa is especially interested in research that connects human rights, international economic law, and development outcomes in Global South contexts.
Pessôa brings skills in database research, annotated bibliographies, policy analysis and argumentation, and data focused tools including Excel, introductory R, and data visualization, and can also support projects needing Portuguese and Spanish language ability.