Dr. Niina Vuolajärvi is an Assistant Professor in International Migration at the European Institute. Her interdisciplinary research is situated in the fields of migration, feminist and socio-legal studies. Niina received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University in 2021. Prior to joining the LSE, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the New School Zolberg Institute of Migration and Mobility.

Niina's projects have investigated migrant sex work, prostitution and migration policies, post-deportation experiences, and race and colonial legacies in Europe. Currently, she is working on her first book “Sex Work, Migration and the ‘Nordic Model’” which examines a feminist-inspired prostitution and anti-trafficking policy approach and its intersections with immigration controls from the perspective of sex workers. This work is based on a vast three-country ethnographic research in the Nordic region (Sweden, Norway, Finland) where the policy approach originates. Niina's scholarship has been supported by the Mellon / American Council of Learned Societies and the Fulbright Foundation and recognized by the Law and Society Association and the American Sociological Association.