Silvana 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 research at Kent Law School, University of Kent (UK), earning her PhD in Socio-Legal Studies 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 Universidad del Azuay's Law School.
In 2021, Silvana was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship 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. In 2024, Silvana was appointed Associate Professor in Law at this department.
Silvana's monograph, 'Feminism, violence against women and law reform: decolonial lessons from Ecuador' was awarded the prestigious Hart-Socio-Legal Studies Association Book Prize in 2023.