Olga Sanmiguel-valderrama
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Cincinnati
United States of America
Biography
Born and raised in Colombia, South America, Dr. Sanmiguel-Valderrama practiced law in Colombia for five years before migrating to Canada in her late 20s. Dr. Sanmiguel-Valderrama earned her LLM in international human rights law at the University of Ottawa, where she also worked at the Human Rights Research and Education Center co-directing a women's project with CEMUJER in El Salvador (Central America) funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In 2004, she graduated with her Ph.D. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, where she was also affiliated to CERLAC, The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at York University. On the basis of extensive fieldwork in Colombia, her research and publications examine the contradictions between neoliberal international trade and military aid on the one hand, and respect for individual and collective human rights –in particular labor, environmental, and equality rights for women and racial minorities—on the other hand. These relationships and contradictions are examined through case studies where both trade and human rights laws and practices are in operation: first, the Colombian export-led flower industry. Her upcoming book (2012) is provisionally titled “No Roses Without Thorns: Trade, Militarization, and Human Rights in the Production and Export of Colombian Flowers†(click here to see book prospectus). Second, though the case of NAFTA and undocumented migration of Mexican and Central American into the USA.
Research Interest
Dr. Sanmiguel -Valderrama have published various articles in prestigious international academic journals presenting her research findings on the interrelationship between globalization, international trade, militarism, social reproduction, and human rights from multidisciplinary and transnational anti-racist feminist approaches. Her research have been supported by competitive grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, and the University of Cincinnati Research Council. Professor's Sanmiguel-Valderrama current areas of research and teaching are family-work conflict under globalization, the relationships between military aid, trade, and human rights in Colombia, feminist mothering, women, gender and law, international women's rights, and women's labor rights.
Publications
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(05-2012). Preferential trade accords between Colombia and the USA: their implications for Colombia's sovereignty. International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, California.
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(10-2012). Criminalizing Manual Mexican Labor in the Age of Border Securitization: Impacts on Families and on their Social Reproduction Processes ". Social Justice Feminism (SJF) Conference at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, Cincinnati.
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(03-2013). Collective Resistance to Precarious forms of Labor in the Context of the Colombian fresh-cut flower industry. Symposium “Global Workers’ Rights: Patterns of Exclusion, Possibilities for Change,†hosted by the Project for Global Workers’ Rights, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations.
