Calla Hummel is an assistant professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Political Science. She studies when and why informal workers organize and the impacts that the world’s 2 billion informal workers have on local and national politics. She is also tracking COVID-19 policy responses as the Bolivia team leader with the University of Miami's Observatory for the Containment of COVID-19 in the Americas.

Calla uses statistical, ethnographic, survey, computational, and formal methods. She conducts research with street vendor unions in La Paz, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil. Her research has been published in BJPS, CPS, LAPS, and LARR, among others, and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, and the University of Miami, among others. She received her PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.