IPSA RC20 to Host Virtual Roundtable on Corruption Research for World Science Day

On the occasion of World Science Day for Peace and Development, the IPSA Research Committee on Political Finance and Political Corruption (RC20) will host a virtual roundtable titled Corruption Research at a Crossroads: Conceptual, Data, and Measurement Challenges and Solutions. The event will be held on Monday, 10 November 2025, from 15:00 to 17:00 (UTC+0) via Zoom.

Participation link (Zoom): https://rider.zoom.us/j/98046502880?pwd=c0tiUGxWZFE4Tkdpai8vMkNBUHNDdz09
Meeting ID: 980 4650 2880
Passcode: 762438

The roundtable will bring together leading scholars and practitioners to address the persistent methodological and data challenges in corruption research. Researchers face issues of conceptual ambiguity, missing or biased data, cross-country comparability, and difficulty in evaluating policy interventions. This virtual roundtable seeks to move beyond the presentation of individual research papers and to foster a high-level, interdisciplinary discussion among scholars, data scientists, and practitioners. It aims to explore how corruption research can borrow and adapt methods from other disciplines—including statistics, environmental modelling, epidemiology, and computer science—to improve robustness, transparency, and impact.

Speakers include Paulina Alvarado Goldman, Agnes Batory, Markus Pohlmann, and Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez, with Giovanna Rodríguez Garcia serving as moderator. The discussion will address key issues such as conceptual ambiguities, data availability and reliability, measurement challenges, and ethical considerations in corruption research. The presentations will be followed by an interactive Q&A session, allowing participants to engage directly with the panelists.

Paulina Alvarado Goldman is the founder of Capacity Building and Policy Experts. She works to strengthen ethical and resilient institutions by bridging strategy, governance, and data-driven insights. She holds advanced degrees in Policy Studies (Johns Hopkins University) and Data Science (University of California, Berkeley) and advises organizations navigating complexity and reform.

Agnes Batory is Pro-Rector for Research and Faculty and Professor at the Department of Public Policy, Central European University (CEU). She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include corruption and corruption control, party politics, and policy implementation and compliance in EU governance. She serves on the editorial boards of Governance, East European Politics, and the Journal of Common Market Studies, as well as the international advisory board of Transparency International EU.

Markus Pohlmann is Professor of Organizational Sociology at the Max-Weber-Institute, University of Heidelberg. Markus Pohlmann’s research focuses on white-collar crime, transnational elites, and the organizational foundations of corruption and compliance. He leads the Heidelberg Research Group for Organization Studies.

Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez is a Peruvian political scientist specializing in anti-corruption and public integrity, founder of the Japan Network of Anti-Corruption Researchers (JANAR), and Steering Committee member of the Standing Group on (Anti-)Corruption and Integrity of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). His core research interest has pushed him to become familiar with fields of science beyond politics, such as social psychology, organizational studies, and machine learning, and he often participates in research projects that combine them.

Giovanna Rodríguez Garcia is Research Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, where she teaches measurement and data analysis. Her work focuses on measuring corruption and institutional integrity in Latin America, including the development of corruption-risk indices for political parties and SDG 16.5 monitoring tools.