Marianna Poyares is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at The New School for Social Research. Her research involves the use of ethnographic methods in critical social theory for understanding the normative commitments within practices of resistance, solidarity and community-building, as articulated by immigration activism.

Drawing on two years of ethnographic research and activism within immigrant spaces and transnational pro-immigration groups, Marianna's dissertation, Radical citizenship: A Politics of Insurgent Universality, reveals the inherent normative and epistemic creativity of such movements by tracing their practices and their claims for justice, solidarity, and community. Her research provides a critique of traditional categories for articulating and describing such movements. It moves away from a traditional taxonomy of migration which characterizes individuals according to their nationality, migratory status, place of origin, intended time of stay, and cause and circumstances of displacement. Instead, it focuses on practices of solidarity, community-building, and membership that transgress this nation-centric framework.