Hello!

I’m Olivia Woldemikael! I’m an Eritrean-American scholar with a research focus on migration and a social justice orientation. I’m currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School for Social Science Research. 

I study the inclusion of migrants and refugees in diverse contexts, with a focus on how the consequences of migration policies affect political outcomes and attitudes. My projects examine the dynamic interactions of refugees, host community members, and local governments, investigating the emergent political opportunities, service impacts, and shifting attitudes towards inclusion that come with migration and displacement. My work encompasses research conducted in Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

I hold a PhD from the Harvard Government Department in Comparative Politics where I was affiliated with The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS). I received the Government Department’s best dissertation prize on a topic of Race, Ethnicity/ or Migration and Politics for my dissertation entitled, “The Local Consequences of Migration Policies in Latin America, Africa, and North America.”

I was a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (2022-2023) awardee, a Fellow with USIP-Minerva Peace and Security Fellow (2021-2022), and a Fellow at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard (2021-2022).

Prior to my graduate studies, I worked at UN World Food Programme on refugee response and social protection from 2015-2017. In 2015, I graduated with a BA from Columbia University.