dr. A (Amanda) Paz Alencar

Biography

Amanda Alencar is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in media, migration, and technology. Her interdisciplinary work bridges the social sciences and humanities to examine how digital media shape migrants’ mobility and sociocultural integration across diverse contexts. Using ethnographic approaches and creative, participatory methods, she has conducted extensive research with refugee communities in the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, and Uganda to explore both the opportunities digital technologies can enable for mobility and settlement and the vulnerabilities they may create. Amanda is the academic coordinator of the European Joint Master Program Superdiversity in Education, Organizations and Society (SEOS), and serves on the Ethics Review Board (ERB) at ESHCC and the Academic Executive Board of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity. Previously, she served as chair of the Intercultural Communication Division of the International Communication Association (ICA). As a consultant, she co-led UNHCR’s Innovation Service research program Digital Leisure Divide and the Forcibly Displaced and authored several reports and a policy brief on technology’s role in migrant integration for the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). Amanda is the founder of Translocal Lives, a digital network initiative focused on research, education, and practical projects on technology and migration, engaging a multidisciplinary group of academic and non-academic stakeholders to facilitate knowledge exchange.