Sara C. Motta

Associate Professor Sara C. Motta is a full-time faculty member at Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia, where she teaches and researches in Politics and International Relations. A Colombian mestiza scholar-activist, she foregrounds decolonising feminist methodologies, emancipatory pedagogies, and subaltern politics—particularly in Latin America—seeking to co-create knowledge with raced and feminised communities for dignified, restorative futures.

Education & Career Path

• BA (Hons) Philosophy – University of London
• MSc Politics of Development (Latin America) – London School of Economics
• PhD Economics & Political Science – University of London (2005)
• Tutorial Fellow & Lecturer – LSE & University of Nottingham (2005-2013)
• Senior Lecturer → Associate Professor – University of Newcastle (2013–present)

Research Interests

Her work spans three interwoven strands: (1) decolonial feminist theory & praxis that re-centres Indigenous, Black and Mestiza knowledges; (2) subaltern politics & social movements across Latin America, analysing landless workers, urban unemployed, feminist peace collectives and solidarity economies; and (3) critical university studies & radical pedagogy, developing participatory, healing-justice-oriented teaching/learning practices inside and against the neoliberal academy.

Grants & Funding Leadership

Since 2014 she has led or co-led 19 grants worth over AUD $500,000, including:

• 2025 ADVANCE Equity in Research Fellowship ($20k)
• 2022 Bennelong Foundation “Healing the Next Generations” ($30k)
• 2017 Commonwealth HEPP “Improving Indigenous Participation in Business Education” ($200k)
• 2015-16 CAPES Brazil “Interacciones: Pedagogía, Educación y Movimientos Sociales” ($48k)

Supervision & Mentoring

She currently supervises seven PhD candidates exploring topics from mad queer poetics to racialised maternal knowledges, climate justice organising, and disability rights, while having successfully graduated fourteen doctorates since 2011.

Editorial & Leadership Roles

Co-founder & Latin American Editor of Interface: a journal for and about social movements; advising editor Latin American Perspectives; founding co-editor Journal of Critical Southern Studies; Co-Vice President Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Association; Co-Program Chair FTGS-ISA.