I am an Assistant Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. I hold a BA in Journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, an MA in Political Science from the University of Chile, and an MA and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Before moving to the US, I worked on the international desks of the newspapers El Mercurio (Chile) and ABC (Spain).

As a comparativist, I  study how personality traits and other individual differences of heads of government impact executive governance. I also analyze the consequences of variation in political institutions across countries, with an emphasis on Latin America. I examine executive-legislative relations, informal institutions, gender and politics, and judicial politics.

I am currently writing the book The Psychology of Presidents, under contract with Cambridge University Press. My first book, Presidential Personalities and Constitutional Power Grabs in Latin America, 1945-2021, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.  My work has been published in The American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, Democratization, Journal of Legislative Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, Journal of Law and Courts, Latin American Perspectives, América Latina Hoy, Revista de Ciencia Política, Bolivian Studies Journal, Política, and Estudios Internacionales. I have also published book chapters in Oxford University Press, Springer, and FLACSO.

I contribute to the Democratic Erosion consortium, serve as Chile’s country expert for Freedom House since 2016, and write for latinoamerica21.com. I also run https://latinos-pittsburgh.com, a bilingual resource for Pittsburgh’s Latino community. You can contact me at iarana@andrew.cmu.edu.