SIMRM 2023

Catherine L Crooke

PhD student at UCLA

Catherine Crooke (she/they) is a PhD student in Sociology at UCLA. Catherine’s current research uses ethnography to study asylum lawyering in Los Angeles, examining how immigration attorneys adapt their work to navigate exclusionary policies of migration control. Before pursuing her PhD, Catherine worked at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and with various organizations assisting displaced people in Lebanon, Jordan, the Caribbean, and the United States. Catherine holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MSc in Refugee & Forced Migration Studies from the University of...

Carlo Chunga Pizarro

Ph.D Student, Urban Planning and Public Policy Department

Carlo Chunga Pizarro (he/they) is a first-generation PhD student in the Urban Planning and Public Policy Department at the University of California, Irvine. They received a BS and master's in urban planning from Texas A&M University. He is originally from Piura, Peru, but immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 7 and was raised in Texas. Their research focuses on how undocumented communities engage in disaster planning and the extent to which sanctuary cities center undocumented individuals in disaster preparedness and mitigation.

Victor Agboga

PhD Student at the University of Warwick

Victor Agboga is a PhD student at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. He has a BA in Philosophy from the Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in Global Governance and Development from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and an MSc in African Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interest revolves around African politics, African diaspora studies, African political economy, human security, and international development.

Maria De Jesus Mora

Assistant Professor in the Sociology

Maria De Jesus Mora is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology, Gerontology, and Gender Studies department at California State University, Stanislaus. As a first-generation scholar from a migrant community, her research centers on race, immigration, and social movements. In her scholarly work, Maria documents how immigrant and racialized groups use their organizational infrastructures to mobilize against policy threats and sustain activism in the long term for immigrant rights social movements. Her current work examines the political participation of Latinx farmworkers in California.

Silvana Larrea Schiavon

DrPH Student at UC Berkeley

Silvana was trained as a medical doctor with a specialty in preventive medicine, before undertaking an MPH with a focus on epidemiology at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico. Currently, she is continuing her studies in public health as a second-year student in the DrPH program at UC Berkeley. She is working as a graduate student researcher at UC Berkeley on projects related to youth experiencing homelessness in California. Her research interests include sexual and reproductive health, migration and health, and health inequalities. She enjoys reading, biking and walking...

Alejandro Gutierrez-Li

Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NCSU

Alejandro Gutierrez-Li is an Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. His work has analyzed the role of pre-migration work experience of immigrants in their labor market opportunities in the United States, factors affecting Mexico-U.S. migration, the determinants of the farm labor supply, and the economic outcomes of Hispanics, among others. Additionally, Dr. Gutierrez-Li is in charge of a new outreach/extension program related to agricultural labor in the U.S. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics...

Steven Herrera Tenorio

Ph.D. student, Departments of Sociology and Demography

Steven Herrera Tenorio (he/him/his) is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Departments of Sociology and Demography at UC-Berkeley. His research interests are on rationality, decision-making, immigration, and racial stratification, and his current project focuses on the residential mobility behavior of immigrants in the U.S. South. Steven is also interested in mixed methods approaches (causal inference, demography, and in-depth interviews). He is very thankful for all of the people that worked in the background to make this possible, as well as the invited guest lecturers and presenters.

Elif Buyukakbas

PhD student in Sociology

Elif Buyukakbas is a third-year PhD student in Sociology and MS student in Applied Statistics at Northwestern University. Her main research areas include gender and migration research with a range of interests in issues of power and state, violence, and families. She is currently interested in the circulation of political remittances, which describe the multi-directional flow of political ideas and norms between places. She is also interested in the role of different family arrangements and states in upholding structures of power and different gender regimes. She holds a BA in Economics...

Alicia Poole

Doctoral Student, Department of Sociology

Alicia Poole is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. Her research examines how migrants fleeing conflict negotiate migration policy regimes along multistage journeys and uses mainly qualitative methods. Her work has been funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), has appeared in The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and is forthcoming in International Migration Review.

Cristine Khan

PhD Candidate in Sociology at CUNY

Cristine Khan is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center. Her research examines the impact of colonialism and global anti-Blackness on second-generation Indo-Caribbean identity movements in New York and Toronto. Cristine also works as an adjunct instructor in the Macaulay Honors Program at Hunter College. She is the Part-Time Coordinator for the BRES Collaboration Hub and for the Teaching and Learning Center where she helps manage programming and conducts workshops related to place-based and abolitionist pedagogy. She also spent many years working as a full-time Instructor at...