Naiara Rodríguez Pena

Naiara Rodríguez Pena serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Business Innovation and Sustainability Washington and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University for Continuing Education Krems' Department for Migration and Globalisation within the Faculty of Business and Globalisation. She leads qualitative fieldwork for the FWF-funded PATHWAYS project (2023-2027) examining involuntary immobility in West Africa.

Her research centers on migration aspiration formation, the migration-development nexus, and adaptation mechanisms following unfulfilled migration goals. Key interests include subjective well-being impacts, life goal recalibration, and methodological approaches to studying immobility. She employs mixed-methods frameworks with strong qualitative components, conducting fieldwork across Europe, Latin America, and Africa.

Recent publications analyze aspiration dynamics through interdisciplinary lenses combining migration theory, development psychology, and historical sociology. Her work reveals how migration drivers persist across social transformations while emphasizing context-specific adaptation strategies in Senegalese communities.

Naiara directs qualitative components of the PATHWAYS project involving University of Ghent collaborators. She previously contributed to ERC-funded initiatives including MOVES (migration aspirations) and MADE (migration-development nexus), plus EUROPINIONS research on European integration perceptions.

Based at Campus Krems (Tract V, Room V.E1.03), she maintains active field research in Senegal while engaging with IMISCOE networks through conference presentations on origin bias in migration studies and aspirational pathways.