Dana Brablecova

Dana Brablec holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge (2020). In 2020, she joined the School of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences, Bangor University, as a research officer on the project “Borders, boundary mechanisms and migration”, part of the WISERD Civil Society Centre.

Dana is a political scientist and sociologist focusing on ethnic identity re-construction in cities. Building on ethnographic research, her doctoral work at the University of Cambridge explored the collective identity re-creation practices developed by Mapuche rural-to-urban migrants within urban Indigenous associations in Santiago de Chile and the role that the state plays in this process. In 2016-2017, Dana was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University, where she conducted socio-economic research that examined the motivations for active and sustained associational engagement of Indigenous migrant individuals in cities when economic incentives were minimal. The results of her research have been published in the Bulletin of Latin American Research, Sociology, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Dana is also a fellow of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, an Affiliated Researcher in Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and a Teaching Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies at the University Cambridge.

On the “Borders, migration and boundary mechanisms” project, she contributes to the comparative qualitative examination of the border (un)making practices of civil society and police organisations, including the study of the factors shaping civil society engagement with migration and forms of bordering.

Research Interests: Community-based organisations; ethnic and racial studies; Indigenous studies; migration, mobility and inequality; social and spatial relations; urban studies.