Welcome!
I am a Fellow in Advanced Quantitative Methods in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I hold a D.Phil in Politics (2023) from the University of Oxford. Previously, I held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Sciences Po, Paris. My research interests lie in the fields of Political Economy and Quantitative Methods. I focus on two main areas: the political economy of autocratic regimes and legacies, and democratic erosion.

My book project uses a top-down rational choice approach to examine how the legacies of autocratic regimes shape extremism after transitions to democracy. I am broadly interested in using political economy and rational choice frameworks to study the legacies of autocracies, the conditions under which democratization occurs, economic and material mechanisms of autocratic stability, the effects of economic policy under dictatorship on contemporary democracies, threats to advanced democracies, how the abundance of information affects rational voting decisions, European politics, rational choice theory, and electoral behaviour. Methodologically, I focus on quantitative methods, particularly causal inference and quasi-experimental designs.

My D.Phil dissertation won the Portuguese Political Science Association Award 2025 for Best Doctoral Dissertation, and was the University of Oxford’s Nominee for the ECPR Jean Blondel PhD Prize 2024, where it was shortlisted. During my doctorate, I was awarded a Full Doctoral Scholarship by FCT, the Portuguese national funding agency for science, research, and technology.

Before joining the University of Oxford I briefly worked in journalism and consultancy. I read for an MA in Governance, Leadership and Democracy Studies (Summa cum laude) at the Institute for Political Studies of the Catholic University of Portugal, with a full scholarship awarded by the Fundação Oriente. I hold a B.Sc. in Business Administration from Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics.

Get in touch with me at c.leao@lse.ac.uk,
or on Bluesky at @catarinaleao.bsky.social.