Pedro Lacerda is a Hamilton College Class of 2027 student studying Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Latin American and Latine Studies. His research interests focus on how violence shapes migrants' bodily experiences, how migrants reframe those experiences through hope, resilience, and survival, and how race, ethnicity, gender, and class shape migration.

Previous research experience: I have participated in two NSF REUs. In summer 2024, I joined the University of Pittsburgh's Mobilization and Political Economy program and proposed an ethnographic project on feminist mobilization in São Paulo, Brazil. In summer 2025, I participated in the Migration Policy and Border Communities REU/field school, where I conducted participant observation in federal courthouses in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico, and semi-structured interviews with public defense attorneys and migrants living in shelters in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

How I got started: I first became involved through Hamilton's Justice Lab, where I developed a close relationship with a professor who later hired me as a research assistant. She referred me to the University of Pittsburgh program, which introduced me to NSF REUs and led me to search the NSF directory for additional programs.

Open to being contacted: Yes

Preferred contact: pedrolacerda495@gmail.com

Comfortable discussing: Finding and applying for summer research opportunities, and the logistics of conducting ethnographic fieldwork as an undergraduate.

Links

Location

Clinton

Clinton, NY 13323, USA