Postdoctoral Fellows

Securitization without Security Project: Dr, Emma Empociello

Dr. Emma Empociello is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Director of the Securitization without Security project at the Leir Institute, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She works on comparative public policy, migration politics, and international cooperation. Her research examines how states with different political regimes adopt similar policy processes at their borders, and her book project shows how Greece, Jordan, and Hungary shifted from welcoming Syrian refugees to closing their borders in parallel ways. Moving beyond externalization frameworks, her work highlights how states in the  so-called Global South shape their own migration agendas and explores U.S.-Jordan cooperation on migration governance.

As part of the Securitization without Security project, Dr. Empociello leads a team researching the political economy consequences of migration control in the Americas, including in southern Mexico and the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia. She also studies migration diplomacy in U.S. relations with Latin American countries.

Before joining Tufts, she was a Non-Tenured Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Sciences Po Bordeaux, where she earned her PhD in Political Science at the Centre Émile Durkheim in 2024. She has held visiting positions at Sciences Po Paris, ELTE University in Budapest, and the French Institute of the Near East in Amman. She is also a former Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego and a Fellow of the French Collaborative Institute on Migration.

Emma is based in Boston and conducts fieldwork in Washington, D.C. and Mexico City.

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