Gabrielle Oliveira’s research focuses on immigration and mobility — on how people move, adapt, and parent across borders. Her expertise includes gender, anthropology, transnationalism across the Americas. Merging the fields of anthropology and education through ethnographic work in multiple countries, Oliveira also studies the educational trajectories of immigrant children. She is the author of Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and their Children in Mexico and in New York City (NYU Press). The book has won the inaugural Erickson and Hornberger Book Award by the University of Pennsylvania’s Ethnography Forum and the award for book of the year by the Council of Anthropology and Education. Her new book Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life out in 2025 by Stanford University Press won the Book of the Year Award by the American Educational Research Association.
Oliveira has been engaged in studying Latin American migration to Massachusetts and has extensively focused on how immigrant children and families navigate newfound educational systems amid a global pandemic. She has worked closely with teachers in dual language programs whose students are Brazilian working to understand what the constraints are in educational practices in and out of classrooms. Oliveira was a Radcliffe Fellow in 2024-2025 where she worked on third book manuscript based on research in the north of Brazil with immigrant children in public schools. Her publications can be found in journals like Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, Bilingual Research Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Teachers College Record, AERA Open, Global Studies of Childhood, among others.
Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, Gabrielle received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. She was the recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Award and Postdoctoral Fellowship. Oliveira is also part of a group called “Colectiva Infancias” that has won a grant from the National Geographic Foundation to assemble a public-facing website on the stories of immigrant children who migrate within the Americas. She has appeared in multiple media vehicles including the BBC, Univision, TV Globo, NPR, and the New York Times.
Consultancy & Speaking Engagements
Gabrielle Oliveira’s research focuses on immigration and mobility — on how people move, adapt, and parent across borders. Her expertise includes gender, anthropology, and transnationalism across the Americas. Merging the fields of anthropology and education through ethnographic work in multiple countries, Oliveira also studies the educational trajectories of immigrant children.
Books by Gabrielle
