Finding MIMS: How the Migration Studies Program came to be

A conversation with Lois Ann Lorentzen, former Academic Director of Master in Migration Studies

Lois Ann Lorentzen is Professor of Social Ethics in the Theology and Religious Studies Department and former Academic Director of Master in Migration Studies at the University of San Francisco. Professor Lorentzen received her PhD in Social Ethics at the University of Southern California. Prior to coming to USF she taught at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

Professor Lorentzen's interest in Migration Studies began as a PhD student in Social Ethics at the University of Southern California. Los Angeles was an area where several Salvadorans resettled during the country's civil war. Lorentzen traveled to El Salvador, bringing undergraduate students for a month at a time, some of whom were election observers in one of the first elections following the conflict. There, she developed deep ties with the country and local organizations. She began her research career, primarily working on environmental issues in El Salvador and Mexico that centered on grassroots environmental movements led by women.

As her research evolved, so did her fascination with liberation theology and how religion served as motivation and inspiration for activists and environmental activists, particularly in El Salvador.

Lorentzen accepted a job offer in San Francisco and began thinking of her next research project. She recalled a rainy Sunday in San Francisco when she thought to herself, "you know what, I really would rather do community-based work and research where you actually live there, not just you going to other places to do it."

The next morning destiny called.

Pew Charitable Trusts

"Sometimes your life changes through a fluke. I remember the next day I walked into my office and the phone rang. It was a program officer from the Pew Charitable Trust," she said.

This was the early 2000s. The Pew Charitable Trust began a major research project on the role of religion and the lives of new migrants. They assembled University research teams in seven gateway cities, including Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, New York, and San Francisco.

Lorentzen received a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida that allowed her to immerse herself in migration literature. The research she and fellow researchers worked on was not only interdisciplinary but community-based as well. They worked with anthropologists and political scientists in Vietnam and Mexico and had funding to do reverse ethnography. The project involved "truly transnational research," Lorentzen explained. One collaborator in Yucatan came to San Francisco to do fieldwork while someone from San Francisco went there.

“That phone call changed my life, changed my academic life,” Lorentzen said. “From that moment on, any research I’ve done included community involvement and was all around migration.”

Faculty from Universidad Iberoamericana, a Jesuit university in Mexico City, approached USF and Lorentzen about offering a joint master's program centered around migration. At the time, a graduate program on migration did not exist in the US. The program was built from scratch, which initially gave her pause and turned to excitement after traveling to Mexico City.

Universidad Iberoamericana

"Four of us went to Mexico City: Gerardo Marín, who was then the Vice-Provost, Karina [Hodoyan], Jay Gonzalez from Philippine Studies... and then we had counterparts there. We sat in a room for three days and hammered out this curriculum. We all got really, really excited about it or the possibility," she said.

Due to Mexican laws, the program was not able to issue joint degrees. Rather, MIMS students would spend a semester studying abroad in Mexico City. Lorentzen preferred this model as it was with her vision of having a more global program.

It took several years to put everything together. Following the announcement of a new Migration Studies Program, recruitment began. Lorentzen worked alongside Graduate Assistant Mauricio Avello to recruit the program's first cohort. She reflected on the Welcome Workshop, sitting with Avello in awe. What started as an idea soon became a reality.

“That first cohort took a risk on us, you know, it was our first time,” she said. “To be in a room after something so abstract, looking at each other, and seeing real people was amazing.”

Lorentzen served as program director for several years, growing the program and establishing the curriculum. Of all her memories as Director, her proudest is that the program exists. Since leaving MIMS, she expressed her delight in the program's direction, led by current Academic Director, Karina Hodoyán.

"I'm really so pleased with where it's headed, where it's been heading. The changes made are great," she said.

University of San Francisco

Her advice to Migration Studies students is simple: Just keep on.

"It seems that everyone who comes to us has a life plan. The students that we attract and accept have a life stance. In this case and at this point in their history, it is a life stamp. They want to better the lives of migrants, and they want to learn more. So, it's my sense that people who come to us are already active in communities. They just want to learn more and apply what they learned. They're passionate about what they're doing, so my advice is just to keep on and keep on. Stay with like-minded people, take care of yourself, and keep learning because I do not doubt any of the students I've ever met or heard about; they all have the right life stance," she said.

Today, Lorentzen's research focuses on environmental refugees and climate change. She regularly teaches a class called "Migrants and Diaspora Religions" to undergraduate students, most of whom are migrants themselves or second generation.

"I kind of came full circle," she said. "It's been great to kind of integrate the two sides of me."