María Belén Abdala holds a Prae-Doc position within the ERC Project DeVOTE at the Department of Government, University of Vienna, where she is pursuing her PhD. She earned her BA in Political Science from Universidad de San Andrés and an MA in Political Science from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina. Prior to her doctoral studies, Belén worked as a research coordinator at think tanks and NGOs, and as a consultant for national and sub-national governments, leading applied research projects related to political institutions. Her main research areas include representation, electoral rules, party competition, and the intersection of technology and politics. Methodologically, she focuses on causal inference, experimental methods, and computational methods for social sciences.