Victor Araujo Silva

Dr. Victor Araujo Silva serves as a Lecturer in Comparative Politics within the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading's School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His academic work focuses on political behavior with particular emphasis on poverty reduction and electoral politics.

Dr. Araujo Silva completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Zurich and the University of São Paulo (USP), and earned his BA in social sciences from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. As a first-generation, non-white scholar from the Global South, his academic journey reflects a commitment to promoting social, political, and economic development through rigorous research.

His research program spans two primary strands: first examining poverty reduction and its implications for political behavior, and second investigating how changes in the religion market transform electoral politics. Dr. Araujo Silva employs formal theoretical frameworks combined with data science applications and applied econometrics in his methodological approach. His scholarly work has been published in top political science journals including the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Research and Methods, and Research & Politics.

Among the critical research questions he has addressed are whether politicians refrain from adopting policies to protect women in conservative constituencies, how the rise of religious minorities transforms electoral politics, whether vulnerability reduction prompts the poor to vote, and under what conditions anti-poverty schemes generate long-lasting electoral returns.