Lucía Bonilla Lara is a MOVES graduate. Her dissertation, Knowledge as a Product: Dilemmas and Utopias of Consulting in the Field of Migration, focused on the subject of short term researchers and international consultants as intermediators of policy creation and knowledge production of migration.
Personal statement: At the age of 16, I won a scholarship to attend an international high school in Canada: 200 teenagers from 80 countries living together. It was one of the best, hardest and most shaping experiences of my life.
Since then, I have been interested in how we can accept people for who they are not in spite of their differences but because of them. As a result, the subject of migration has been my greatest passion and fascination.
I have been involved in a variety of research subjects within the migration field. However, it was not until I worked as an immigration official that I started understanding the crucial need of focusing on the intermediaries of migration. Bureaucrats, policy makers, international organization workers, consultants and researchers have an important yet often understudied position within the migration process.
Regarding my academic background, I have a Bachelor of Arts in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic (ME, USA), that is the basis of my interdisciplinary methodological approach to research. As for my graduate degree, I hold a Master of Science in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam as part of the Erasmus Mundus Program on International Migration and Social Cohesion. Finally, within my professional experience, I have worked for several government institutions, international organizations and NGOs that deal a variety of social subjects, specifically including those of migration and public policy.
E-mail: lucia.bonillalara (at) ff.cuni.cz
Conference Presentations
Lucía Bonilla Lara. “Migration Consultants New Hubs of Humanitarian Control.” 17th IMISCOE Annual Conference, Reflexive Migration Studies Paper Sessions Session 2, Paper 4, 2 July 2020.
Lucía Bonilla Lara. “The study of Migration Consultants: Theoretical Positions and Methodological Challenges.” Migration Politics Colloquium, Fall Meeting, 13 November 2020.
Lucía Bonilla Lara. “Migration Consultants: Positionalities and Dilemmas of Knowledge Workers.” Conference: The Moral Economies of Knowledge Production on Migration: Conflicts, Values, Positionalities. Track I, Panel 3: Ordering Migration (Co) Producers and Productions Sites. IMIS, University of Osnabrück. 3 December 2020.
