Joana Lopes De Deus Pereira

I graduated at the Nova University of Lisbon in International Relations and Political Science, a post graduate diploma in Diplomatic Studies from the Lusíada University in Lisbon and I hold a PhD in Security Studies from the Department of War Studies and Defence Studies - with a thesis on the role of private security contractors in the oil sector in Angola and Nigeria, fully funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology in Portugal. My original field of expertise is the role of private security in the oil security arena in Lusophone Africa.

I was the co-founder of the Private Military & Security Research Group, which seeks to increase the understanding of PMSC’s while promoting a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of PMSCs at King’s College London.

Previously, I worked as an independent security consultant doing geopolitical and country risk analysis for several consulting companies, producing forward-looking analysis about political and economic events that impacted on the energy security sector – with a focus on intelligence risk analysis, policy analysis.

Earlier, I started my career as a civil servant at Portugal’s Ministry of Justice, where I was part of the core team behind the development and introduction of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) schemes in Portugal. I co-authored one of the earliest publications on justice-of-the-peace in the country.

Presently, my research examines the role of private security actors in migration, the technological aspects of border security and how it impacts on EU migration agenda. Later advances, not only in security field in general, but also in the migration field, in particular, illustrate that the market for security is continuously flourishing and a demand market is fed by evolving migration flows. In order to understand the level of influence of private security actors in the design of EU migration policy making, we will use process-tracing methodology to observe the changing pathways of migration policy process and understand when and why this changed has occurred.

This research aspires to understand what the impacts of outsourcing security for the EU migration agenda, how is EU migration policy evolving and adapting to borderless security threats and what part the private security industry has in the EU security/migration nexus dynamics.