Luiz Vilaça

This profile was current as of May 2023, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Luiz Vilaça is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and a Kellogg PhD Fellow. His research cuts across organizational, political, and cultural sociology. His work focuses on anti-corruption reform, institutional change, and the effects of corruption investigations on public opinion and voting behavior. In particular, he examines how anti-corruption institutions shield external threats by using outreach strategies that increase the visibility of corruption investigations. He also analyzes the conditions under which investigations affect trust in political institutions and increase the chances that populist candidates are elected. His research combines an in-depth case study of the “Car Wash” Operation in Brazil with comparative historical analyses of anti-corruption institutions in multiple countries, including Italy, Mexico, and Indonesia.