Tara Fiorito is a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Dr. Halleh Ghorashi's VICI project Engaged Scholarship at the Sociology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a research associate of the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.  

Her research focuses on the challenges and possibilities of engaged scholarship in the United States, South Africa and the Netherlands and its contribution to long term inclusion of disadvantaged groups for the purpose of enabling the production of robust, comprehensive, and transformative knowledge to: 1) reflect and unsettle the dominant taken-for-granted structures of inequality and exclusion through engagement with (refugee) voices and unconventional academic practices from the “margin” and 2) rethink the role and responsibility of academia in those processes.

Her PhD research concerns longitudinal ethnographic research (2011-2018) on the politicization, emancipation and political strategies of undocumented Latino youth in Los Angeles, USA. 

Research interest and expertise: migration, integration, refugees, diversity, inclusivity, emancipation, identity/subjectivity, social movements, urban sociology, critical-, feminist- and postcolonial theory, qualitative research methods (ethnography, life-histories, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, policy analysis, participatory research, interviewing and focus groups).

For the past five years (2013-2018), Tara worked as a lecturer in the social sciences and developed course material for 12 different academic courses, teaching, coaching and supervising more than 700 students at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University. On average, students evaluated her teaching and supervising with a 9 (out of 10).

List of courses:

-          Classical sociological theory (B2)

-          Contemporary sociological theory (B2)

-          Wild Years: social theories on youths in late modern society (B2 & B3)

-          Sociological analysis of policy (B2)

-          Qualitative research methods (B1 & B2)

-          Introduction in sociology (B1 & B2)

-          Introduction in social science (B1)

-          Sociology for anthropologists (B1)

-          Urban sociology (B2 & B3)

-          Migration and integration (B3)

-          Mixed methods research (B2)

-          Mentor and thesis supervision (B1, B2, B3)

Tara holds a Cum Laude Research Master Social Sciences and a Cum Laude Bachelor of Sociology. In 2019, she will defend her PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam.

The title of her PhD thesis is Struggling with Success. Emotions, Experience and Subjectivity in the Undocumented Youth Movement in Los Angeles.

In 2015, she received a research scholarship in Political Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.

In 2014, she received a grant from the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) for the documentary film Undocumented and Unafraid in Los Angeles. 

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