Nohora Constanza Niño Vega, from Colombia, is a 2016 Latin America and Caribbean Program MMEG grantee.
Nohora is a National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) researcher at the Children’s Research Observatory (ODIN), El Colegio de Sonora, Mexico. She leads a project analyzing violence in Sonora from the perspective of its children and adolescents, including those traveling through to seek asylum in the United States. Working on such a complex subject impels Nohora to go beyond analysis to help create policies that minimize the impact of that violence on the lives of children and youths.
Nohora was trained as a psychologist at the National University of Colombia and holds MAs in Development Studies and in Social Sciences, and a PhD in Research in Social Sciences with a minor in Sociology from FLACSO-Mexico. Her areas of focus include children/youth in armed violence contexts, forced displacement, human security, gender, and peacebuilding processes in Colombia and Mexico, particularly on the Sonora/Arizona and Norte de Santander/Táchira borders.
She began her career as a research coordinator on a project in Tijuana, developing human security agendas in a neighborhood suffering from insecurity violence. Since then, she has collaborated on numerous research projects, including on education for peacebuilding in Medellín and Acapulco, with the University of Glasgow and Colombia’s Fundación Ideas para la Paz. She has researched Venezuelan child and youth migration on the Colombian-Venezuelan border and that of Mexican children and young migrants/refugees on the US-Mexico border. Nohora says, “I am very excited to work on collaborations that directly involve the community; that is what motivates me the most in research projects.”
In addition to her research, Nohora has taught at universities in Colombia, participates in numerous official and professional working groups on adolescents, youth, violence, and migration, publishing extensively on these subjects, and has worked as a psycho-social advisor for refugee children. Nohora now volunteers at a shelter serving internally displaced Mexican and Central American populations, drawing on her experience as a psychologist for such populations in Colombia.
