Lauren Heidbrink, MA/MS, Ph.D.

Programs/Classes Taught:

Applied Behavioral Sciences
Social Sciences

LAS 309: Critical Thinking and Writing
LAS 331: Dynamics of Group Behavior
LAS 407: Applied Communication in Society
LAS 426: Multicultural Dimensions
LAS 495: Cultural Geography

Areas of Expertise:

(Im)migration
Childhood and youth
Human Rights
Law at the margins of the state
Latin America and lusophone Africa
Nonpofit administration
Torture and trauma
Transnational social movements
Juvenile justice
Qualitative Research Methods

Biography:

Since the late 1990s, I have been working in the fields of human rights and international public health in Argentina Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Angola and Mozambique. As an anthropologist and a professor, I bring a pairing of these diverse professional and research experiences to the classroom. In addition to teaching and research, I consult with a number of nonprofit organizations both locally and nationally.

Education:

Ph.D., Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, 2010
MA, Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, 2007
MA/MS, International Public Service Management, DePaul University, 2003
BA, City Planning, Latin American Studies, Spanish Literature, University of Virginia, 1998

Research and Interests:

I recently completed a 3-year, multi-sited ethnography on the ways unauthorized migrant youth navigate legal institutions, government bureaucracies and non-profit organizations in the U.S. and abroad. My research explores the ways youth are caught at the intersection of competing interests of international, immigration, juvenile and family laws.

I am currently engaged in several research initiatives, including explorations of performance and identity among the Filipino diaspora in Chicago; inter-generational activism among DREAMers and their unauthorized parents; and the social reintegration of youth deportees into their communities in Guatemala.

Publications

Heidbrink, L. forthcoming 2013. In Whose Best Interests? Migrant Children, Families and the State. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Human Rights Series.

Heidbrink, L. 2012. At a Crossroads: Youth at the Intersection of the Family and the State. In Transnational Migration, Gender and Rights. Ragnhild Sollund, editor. Great Britain: Emerald Press.

Heidbrink, L. 2010. Recasting the Agency of Unaccompanied Youth. In Emerging Perspectives on Children in Migratory Circumstances: Selected Proceedings of the Working Group on Childhood and Migration June 2008 Conference. R. Reynolds, et al., editors. Philadelphia: Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences and the Drexel iDea Repository.

Heidbrink, L. 1997. National Non-governmental Organization Report on the Situation of Argentine Women Since the Beijing Conference on Women. In The Committee Monitoring the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women of the United Nations.

Contact Information: