Maria Pereira Lopez

Maria Pereira Lopez is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Santiago de Compostela's Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. She earned her doctorate from USC in 2013 with a thesis on indicator development for public service evaluation, establishing the Service Coverage Index methodology.

Her current research investigates emotional dimensions of political behavior, examining how affective responses shape voting patterns, party identification, and responses to political communication. She has developed innovative methodologies for measuring emotional responses to political stimuli across different media environments.

Recent publications analyze the emotional foundations of partisan identification in Spain, affective polarization in Latin American politics, and credibility assessment of social media news. Her work has contributed methodological tools for studying political emotions in electoral contexts across different cultural settings.