Dr. Olivia Mena Lecturer Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies University of Texas at Austin oliviamena@austin.utexas.edu 512-471- 2465 EDUCATION The London School of Economics and Political Science PhD in Sociology, February 2016 Supervisor: Professor Paul Gilroy Nomos: A Political Sociology of Contemporary Global Border Barriers The London School of Economics and Political Science MSc (Merit) in Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies, 2011 Honors: Merit Dissertation with Distinction: Furtherance of an Illegal Presence: Contesting Politics of Life and Death in Arizona and the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands University of Texas in San Antonio M.A. in Bicultural and Bilingual Studies, 2008 University of Missouri- Columbia B.A. International Studies, 2004 Areas of Concentration: Latin American Studies, Journalism Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Spring 2004 Universidad de Costa Rica, Fall 2001 AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonial Studies; Comparative Ethnic Studies; Latino/a Studies; Borderlands Studies POSITIONS HELD/TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2016-2017 Lecturer in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin Introduction to Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (Fall 2016) Ethnicity and Gender: La Chicana (two sections Fall 2016) 2013-2014 Graduate Teaching Assistant at the London School of Economics Key Issues in Contemporary Societies: An Introduction to Contemporary Sociology (two sections). Prepared and led weekly discussion sections and administered course grading.
O. Mena, C.V. 2 of 6 2014 St. Martin s University, London. Special seminar on social research methods and architecture. 2008 Adjunct Faculty and Teaching Assistant, the University of Texas at San Antonio Invited to teach undergraduate course Cultures of the Southwest, a cultural studies course option. Worked as a graduate teaching assistant for several faculty members in the Bicultural and Bilingual Studies department assisting with lecturing, grading and lesson planning. INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS 2015 Visiting Researcher, Center for Inter- American and Border Studies, University of Texas at El Paso 2012-2013 Visiting Researcher, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin 2012 Visiting Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad de Costa Rica PUBLICATIONS Book Reviews (23 Sept. 2014) of Khalili, L. (2013) Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies. (Stanford: Stanford University Press) in Antipode from: http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/book- review_mena- on- khalili.pdf (17 Sept. 2014) of Kaag, J. and Kreps, S. (2014) Drone Warfare. (Cambridge: Polity Press) in the London School of Economics Review of Books. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/09/17/book- review- drone- warfare- by- john- kaag- and- sarah- kreps/ (26 May 2014) of Bauman, Z. (2013) What use is sociology? Conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester. (Cambridge: Polity Press) in the London School of Economics Review of Books. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/05/26/book- review- what- use- is- sociology- zygmunt- bauman/ Other Academic Writing (9 Dec. 2013) Intervention Removing the Monument to Overcoming Walls: Reflections on Contemporary Border Walls and the Politics of De- bordering in Antipode Foundation Blog. Available from:
O. Mena, C.V. 3 of 6 http://antipodefoundation.org/2013/12/09/removing- the- monument- to- overcoming- walls/ (2011) Furtherance of an Illegal Presence: Contesting Politics of Life Death in Arizona and the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands (MSc thesis). The London School of Economics, London, UK. INVITED SEMINAR SPEAKER 2016 Center for Inter- American and Border Studies, University of Texas El Paso. Seminar on the U.S.- Mexico Border Fence. 2014 Boston University. Seminar on Biopolitics and Borders. 2014 London School of Economics, Inequalities Research Group. Seminar on the Proliferation of Global Border Walls. 2013 University of Texas at Austin, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. Seminar on Contemporary Border Barriers in Latin America. 2012 Universidad de Costa Rica, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales. Seminar on the socio- political history of the Costa Rican Border Wall with Nicaragua. PAPERS PRESENTED AT PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCES Walled Up: A Political Sociology of Contemporary National Barriers in the ASA International Committee Talkshop III: Comparative Perspectives on Im/migrant Bodies in a Global Context at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in Denver, Colorado, Nov. 17-20, 2016. Third- Space Thinking: Using Border Methods in the Borderlands at the Bridging North America: Connections and Divides at the University of Turku, Finland, Aug. 28-30, 2014. Border Epistemology: Resources for thinking and theorizing securitization of the borderlands Chaired by: Prof. Michael Keith at the Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies PhD Symposium at the London School of Economics, London, June 12, 2014. Looking from the Borderlands: Ideologies of Xeno- Racism and the Popular Post- racial Imagination at the British Sociological Association Race Ethnicity Study Group Conference at Newman University, Birmingham, U.K. Jan. 31 2014. Making Walls Speak: Mixed Methods and Data Collection in a Study of Contemporary National Border Barriers on Qualitative interviews and Mixed methods Panel at the Methods, Methodologies and Sociological
O. Mena, C.V. 4 of 6 Research Sociology department annual PhD conference for the London School of Economics, Jan. 25, 2014. Constructing and Contesting the Tortilla Wall : Politics and Practices of de- bordering and re- bordering in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands at the 2012 European Association for Borderland Studies Conference at the Centro de Estudos Geográficos da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Sept. 12-15, 2012 Librotraficantes (book smugglers): Fighting the Ethnic Studies Book Ban in Tucson, Arizona Chaired by Prof. John Solomos at the Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies PhD Symposium at City University, London, June 15, 2012 Constructing and Contesting the Tortilla Wall : the Architecture of Division and Securitization in the U.S.- Mexico borderlands on the Borders and Margins Panel: Chaired by Prof. Paul Gilroy at the Centres and Peripheries Sociology department annual PhD conference for the London School of Economics, Jan. 27, 2012 Theorizing Whiteness : Contesting binary notions of race with Latina and Chicana Experiences Paper presented at Latino/a USA: Migration and Transnationalism at The University of Southern Denmark, Odensa, Denmark 2008 Desviación: Resistance in the U.S.- Mexican Trans- border Trucking Industry Paper presented at the Annual Conference for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Austin, Texas 2008 CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR ORGANIZATION Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies PhD Symposium. Lead organizer of grant- funded annual 2- day workshop and conference held at London School of Economics, London June 4-5, 2015. Lecture Chair of Displacement, Belonging and Longing: Notes on Traveling Heavy by Professor Ruth Behar held at the London School of Economics, London. Oct. 30, 2014. Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies PhD Symposium. Lead organizer of grant- funded annual 2- day workshop and conference held at London School of Economics, London June 12-13, 2014. Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies Seminar Series. Lead organizer of a quarterly seminar series of events and guest speakers held at the London School of Economics, London. Academic year 2013-2014 and 2014-2015.
O. Mena, C.V. 5 of 6 Centres and Peripheries. Lead organizer of the annual PhD Sociology Conference for the London School of Economics at Cumberland Lodge, London. Jan 27-29, 2012. AWARDS 2012 LSE Post Graduate Travel Fund 2011-2015 Several LSE Postgraduate Research Scholarships 2014 LSE Writing- up Grant 2014 LSE Post Graduate Travel Fund 2015 LSE Post Graduate Travel Fund ADDITIONAL TRAINING Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons Summer School in Barcelona, Spain July 2016 Summer Institute Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands at the Universität Bremen (Organized in cooperation between the Bremen Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Center for Global Studies and the Humanities) in Bremen, Germany 15-26 May 2015 ACADEMIC SERVICE Elected Student Representative and Liaison, 2011-2015 PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS British Sociological Association Race and Ethnicity Study Group American Studies Association National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies LANGUAGES English, Spanish, and Portuguese DISSERTATION SUMMARY Since 2001, there are more than 50 national border barriers around the globe proposed, under construction, or finished. My dissertation considers this new infrastructure inside larger questions of sovereignty, governance, immigration, and security in the borderless age of globalization. To approach this work I used an epistemological framework of border thinking, a third space hermeneutics that locates the border as a central place to theorize the complex geopolitical and postcolonial relationships. I conducted two case studies of this fortress infrastructure, one along the U.S.- Mexico border and another along the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua, considering how new border walls are material
O. Mena, C.V. 6 of 6 manifestations of inchoate sovereignty, occupying claims in the borderlands one of the latest frontier zones of global capital. Broadly, this project calls for us to consider the global proliferation of national border walls and fences in a way that invokes collective action against the persisting operative logic of race/culture thinking that underpins securitization as both a form of governance and an ideology. It situates the urgency of this intellectual work inside the expanding sovereign jurisdictions of capital and opens up new sets of questions about how national border barriers are integral structures inside the changing ideo- political frameworks of war, sovereignty, and governance in the age of the drone.