Amanda Pinheiro de Oliveira grew up in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  After receiving her diploma in journalism, she worked as a reporter for different publications; denouncing cases of corruption, reporting on the economic and social costs of the drug cartels, and scrutinizing Rio's policymaking system.  In 2010, Amanda left her award-winning career as an investigative reporter to join academia.  She completed a Master of Arts in Latin America and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where her interest in migration studies first began.  Her research project, Migration Without Borders? The Case of the Mercosur Agreement and Bolivian Immigrants in Brazil, examined the tensions between Mercosur migration policies and the life experiences of Bolivian workers employed in San Paulo's garment industry.

Amanda's current project aims to investigate the dynamics behind the transformation of emerging countries into humanitarian superpowers, with specific focus on the consequences of this process for immigrants and refugees in Brazil.