Lorena Vinuela holds a bachelor's degree in political science and public administration from the National University of Cuyo (2003), a master of arts in international relations and a master of public administration (2007) from Syracuse University. A Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Viñuela has worked at the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and EuropAid’s AL-Invest program. At the Maxwell School, she held the position of research associate of the Moynihan Institute and of the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research.

Lorena Viñuela's research interests center on comparative political economy, public administration and public policies, democratization, decentralization, and party politics with a focus on developing countries. Her primary regions of interest are the Latin American and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation examines how changes in the distribution of resources across levels of government have impacted party systems in fiscally decentralized countries in Latin America between 1980 and 2008.

Ms. Viñuela is co-author of the book “Rents to Riches? Political Economy of Natural Resource-led Development,” with Naazneen Barma, Kai Kaiser, and Tuan Minh Le (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012), and the article “Qualitative Data Archiving: Rewards and Challenges,” with Colin Elman and Diana Kapiszewski (PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (1): 23–27, 2010).