Beatriz Silva da Costa is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, specializing in comparative politics and political methodology. Currently, she is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on Latin America, with substantive interests in bureaucracy, governance, and the political economy of corruption. Her dissertation examines how political institutions and bureaucratic dynamics shape the distribution of public resources, using public procurement as a lens into favoritism, accountability, and state capacity. Methodologically, she employs a multi-method approach, combining quasi-experimental designs, large-scale data analysis, text-as-data techniques, and interviews. Her research has appeared in journals such as Revista E-Legis and the Brazilian Journal of the General Comptroller of the Union, as well as in the edited volume Democracy and Anti-Corruption Public Policies published by Transparency International and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Her work has been supported by the UVA Quantitative Collaborative, the UVA Center for Global Inquiry & Innovation, the UVA Quandt Fund for International Research, the UVA Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer Awards, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the UVA Society of Fellows. Before joining UVA, she earned an M.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. She was also a fellow researcher at the Brazilian Comptroller General’s Office and a research assistant at UFMG, contributing to projects on executives, cabinet politics, and legislative studies.