Mayra Feddersen

January to May, 2026

Mayra Feddersen is an Associate Professor of Law at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. She earned her Ph.D. in 2017 from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) Program at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she specialized in socio-legal studies and the governance of migration. Her research sits at the intersection of immigration policy, labor market integration, and the operation of legal and bureaucratic institutions, with a strong emphasis on South-South migration. 

She is a principal researcher at the MIGRA Millennium Nucleus (ANID-MILENIO-NCS2022-051), an interdisciplinary research center focused on the governance of migration in South America. She also serves as Deputy Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society in Chile (CIDS), and as President of the Board of the Center for Migration Policy (CPM), where she helps foster dialogue between academic research and public policy. 

Mayra is currently leading several funded research projects. With the support of the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), she is co-investigating labor market integration processes of South American migrants in Chile, in collaboration with Asad L. Asad (Stanford University), under the project titled “Legal Status and Labor Incorporation: Perspectives from the Global South” (Project ID 1240548). She is also part of an international team studying bureaucratic practices and discretion at the border, alongside Carla Sepúlveda and Mike Slaven, supported by the British Academy’s Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research Projects 2024 grant. 

From 2020 to 2024, she served as principal investigator of a Chilean FONDECYT grant (Project N°11200018) entitled “Security vs. Human Rights? The Semantic Evolution of Migration Policies in South America and the Factors That Determine It,” which analyzed shifting narratives and policy framings around migration across the region. 

Mayra holds a law degree from Diego Portales University (2006) and an LL.M. from Berkeley Law (2011). Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a Professor of Law at Diego Portales and staff attorney at its Human Rights Center, where she co-directed the International Human Rights Law Clinic and taught courses on the Inter-American Human Rights System and International Refugee Law. She has also worked as a consultant for the European Commission, the Due Process of Law Foundation, and the Justice Studies Center of the Americas (CEJA).