Michael Lettieri is a Senior Fellow for Human Rights at UC San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a focus on modern Latin America from UC San Diego and has researched political culture and authoritarian politics in 20th-century Mexico, journalism and threats to freedom of expression during the drug war, and gender-based violence.

His current projects include a study of foreign media coverage of the Mexican drug war, and an effort to develop new digital tools for documenting disappearances in partnership with local activists in Sinaloa. He has written extensively about the intersections between democracy, security policy, organized crime, and violence, and serves as a managing editor of the Mexico Violence Resource Project.