Research

Professor in the Department of Political Science at UFMG. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at FGV-CEPESP, with a FAPESP scholarship. He holds a PhD in Political Science from USP (2021), with a doctoral scholarship from CNPq. During his PhD, he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University (09/2019–02/2020), funded by a Capes-PrInt scholarship. He holds a MA in Political Science (2017), with a CNPq scholarship, and a BA in Law (2014) from UFMG.

He is an associated researcher with the following research groups and networks:

Center for Legislative Studies (CEL-UFMG)
Center of Politics and Economics in the Public Sector (FGV-CEPESP)
Study Group on Local Politics (NEPOL-UFJF) (NEPOL-UFJF)
Red de Estudios sobre Política Subnacional en América Latina (REPSAL)
Laboratório de Monitoramento e Avaliação de Políticas e Eleições (MAPE, IESP-UERJ)

He has professional experience in new technologies for data analysis and production, with expertise in political-electoral, socioeconomic, and social media data.

He served as a technical adviser at Fundação Seade (São Paulo State Statistical Bureau), developing projects using new technologies to produce and analyze data; as a data coordinator and analyst on Volt Data Lab’s and Núcleo Jornalismo’s projects; and as a data scientist on G1, where he produced news stories about the Brazilian general elections in 2018.

Research interests:

Electoral Studies
Local Politics
Electoral Geography
Legislative Studies
Political Parties

Publications and current works:

Peer-reviewed articles

Rocha, Marta Mendes; Gelape, Lucas. 2024. Políticos locais e conexões multinível: a atuação de brokers eleitos no federalismo brasileiro, Reflexión Política, v. 26, p. 33-47. (In Portuguese)
Gelape, Lucas; Luz, Joyce; Thomé, Débora. 2024. Padrões espaciais de votação nas eleições para a Câmara Municipal de São Paulo: um estudo a partir das eleições de 2020, Estudos Avançados, v. 38, p. 301-323. (In Portuguese)
Gelape, Lucas and Glauco Peres da Silva. 2022. Party restriction on career decisions of Brazilian politicians: evidence from Brazilian city councilors. Revista de Sociologia e Política, v. 30, e014. (In Portuguese)
Hoyler, Telma, Lucas Gelape and Graziele Silotto. 2021. The construction of political-territorial ties: evidence from of São Paulo. Opinião Pública, Campinas, v. 27, n. 2, p. 549–584. (In Portuguese)
Pereira, Rodolfo Viana and Lucas Gelape. 2015. Open-List Proportional Representation Anachronism in Brazil: the non-applicability of its original reasons for adoption. Revista de Informação Legislativa, Brasília, v. 52, n. 205, p. 261–279, march. 2015. (In Portuguese)

On press

Gelape, Lucas; Thomé, Débora. Aonde vão as vereadoras? Uma análise das trajetórias de mulheres na política municipal. Brazilian Political Science Review.

Books

Gelape, Lucas; Silva, Glauco Peres da. Geografia eleitoral: teoria e prática. Curitiba: Intersaberes, 2025. (In Portuguese)
Silotto, Graziele; Gelape, Lucas; Castro, Pedro; Silva, Glauco Peres da. Poder e território: uma abordagem a partir da ciência política. Curitiba: Intersaberes, 2021. (In Portuguese)

Book chapters

Mendonça, Ricardo Fabrino, Lucas Gelape and Carlos Estevão C. Cruz. 2023. Collective Candidacies and Mandates in Brazil: Challenges and Pitfalls of a Gambiarra. In: Bua, Adrian and Sonia Bussu (eds). Reclaiming Participatory Governance: social movements and the reinvention of democratic innovation. New York: Routledge, p. 154-159.
Soares, Fabiana de Menezes and Lucas Gelape. 2016. Legislative advising at ALMG: the Amicus curiae of legislative process? In: Santos, Manoel Leonardo and Fátima Anastasia (eds.). Política e Desenvolvimento Institucional no Legislativo de Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte: Editora PUC Minas. p. 381–413. (In Portuguese)

PhD Dissertation

Gelape, Lucas. 2022. In spite of all, local political careers: alternative patterns, incumbency advantage and political parties on city councilors trajectories. University of São Paulo, São Paulo. (In Portuguese)

Masters’ Thesis

Gelape, Lucas. 2017. Electoral geography in municipal elections under the open-list electoral system: a study from Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. (In Portuguese)

Conference papers

Gelape, Lucas and Thiago Álvares Feital. 2015. From Art to Politics: challenging representation. Human Rights, Rule of Law and the Contemporary Social Challenges in Complex Societies: Proceedings of the XXVI World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Belo Horizonte: Initia Via. p. 2211–2232.

Preprint

Rocha, Marta Mendes and Lucas Gelape. 2023. Political affairs”: brokerage relationships between state representatives and local politicians in Brazil. SciELO Preprints. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.4064 (Original work published 2022)

Working papers

Geografia eleitoral no Brasil: um diagnóstico teórico-conceitual. 2025. (with Glauco Peres da Silva) (In Portuguese)
Identificação de Bases Eleitorais a Partir da Votação de Candidatos: uma comparação de diferentes medidas. 2025. (with Marco Antonio Faganello) (In Portuguese)
Multilevel political connections and interest intermediation: identifying political alliances with social media data. 2025. (with Marta Mendes da Rocha, Fernando Meireles, and Guilheme de Abreu Duque)
Responsiveness through constituency service? Public policies demands and legislator behavior in the local level. 2025. (with Julia Tachima)
Spatial regularity: assessing spatial voting patterns in Brazil’s open-list proportional representation. 2025.
Sleeping with the Enemy? The Coordination of Candidates List in OLPR. (with George Avelino, Cedric Antunes, and Carolina Guimarães)
Interpolation of electoral data into census tract: a novel method based on the Brazilian case. 2025. (with Rogerio Barbosa, Bruno Schaefer, and Tomás Paixão Borges)
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket: Rethinking Political Representation in Service-Dependent Communities. 2025. (with Débora Thomé and Lara Polisseni)