Sara Vigil is Associate Research Fellow at ISPI for the Africa Programme. Sara is a Research Associate at the Hugo Observatory of the University of Liège (ULg) (Belgium) and at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands) where she is completing her PhD on the interconnections between climate change politics, land grabbing, and migration (with a focus on Senegal and Cambodia). At ISS, she is a member of the MOSAIC project: ‘Climate change mitigation policies, land grabbing and conflict in fragile states’. At ULg, she is a management committee member of the ‘Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics’ (EDGE) EU H2020 project and has been a research partner of the ‘Migration, Environment, and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy’ (MECLEP) project led by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Sara has also been a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM).
Sara has consulted on environment and migration issues for the World Bank, the Nansen Initiative, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, and on land grabbing for the former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. She follows closely the UNFCCC climate negotiations as a member of the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility and she has lectured on international cooperation, migration governance, and environmental politics at Sciences Po Paris, Paris 13-Sorbonne University, and at the Brussels School of Journalism and Communication (IHECS). Sara is also a research associate of the Centre of Philosophy, Politics and Epistemology (PHILéPOL) of the University Paris V-Sorbonne where she completed her Master’s Degree and worked for the ‘Democracy in front of Environmental Stakes’ project.