Katherine Jensen

Katherine Jensen is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Student Coordinator of the Urban Ethnography Lab at The University of Texas. Her research interests include the state, race/racism, and forced migration. Her dissertation, “Worthy of Safe Haven: The Politics of Asylum in Contemporary Brazil,” is an ethnographic study of the asylum-screening process in Brazil. In particular, it investigates how states decide who is worthy of asylum, and the kinds of political relationships established between the state and applicants during this process. Her work has been published in City & Community, Contexts, The Latin Americanist, Public Books, Racism Review, Metropolitics, Austin American-Statesman, and by UT Press. Her doctoral studies and research have been funded by such entities as the U.S. Fulbright Commission, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.