Mariana Batista is a Political Science professor at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - Brazil. She obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science from UFPE. She was a visiting fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University (2018) and the Latin American Centre at the University of Oxford (2019-20). 

Her research area has focused on the politics of coalition governments in presidential systems and the policy implications of government composition. She has published in different journals, such as the European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, Governance, Party Politics, and Research and Politics. In 2015, she received the Guillermo O'Donnell Award for best dissertation from the Latin American Political Science Association.