Silvana’s academic work incorporates empirical qualitative methods to understand and interrogate the role of criminal justice and carceral punishment in society, particularly in the lives of survivors of violence against women. She is currently interested in anti-carceral and feminist activists and legal practitioners' response to the trend, in contemporary human rights discourses, of bolstering criminal justice and carceral punishment. Her current research also includes a comparative study of the European and Inter-American human rights case law on violence against women, from a decolonial and abolitionist perspective.

Silvana Tapia Tapia qualified as a lawyer in 2006 in Cuenca, Ecuador. She started as assistant lecturer at Universidad del Azuay in 2007, where she completed a Master’s degree in Criminal Law in 2012. In 2013 Silvana started her doctoral studies at Kent Law School (UK), earning her PhD in 2017 with a dissertation entitled “Criminalising violence against women: feminism, penality and rights in post-neoliberal Ecuador”.

Between 2017 and 2022 Silvana served as Assistant Professor of Law and Coordinator of Research at the Law School of Universidad del Azuay.

In 2021, Silvana was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to conduct a research project entitled “Toward a non-penal human rights framework to counteract violence against women”, hosted by Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, with the mentorship of Professor Natasa Mavronicola. She conducts her research at BLS since May 2022.