Martina  Vittoria Sottini

Martina Vittoria Sottini

PhD candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies

Department of Geography and Environment

Languages
English, Italian, Korean, Spanish
Key Expertise
Transnational Migration, Intersectionality, Remittances, Urbanisation

About me

Martina Vittoria Sottini is a PhD candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies. She is currently developing doctoral research on Mongolian migration to South Korea. More specifically, her project aims to understand how the intersection of translocally gendered, racialised, and classed subjectivities and relations shapes the labour and work, as well as the economic and social remittances, of Mongolian marriage and labour migrant women in the Seoul metropolitan area. With her research, Vittoria hopes to address several research gaps and biases in the migration literature: from the relationship between class and remittances, to the invisibility of female labour migrant women (who are not domestic workers) in East Asian labour markets, and the lack of research on female marriage migrants' lived experiences of labour (beyond reproductive and care work).

During the 2022/23 academic year, Vittoria will be one of the three PhD students' representatives (PhD reps) at the LSE Department of Geography and Environment.

Between 2020 and 2021, Vittoria worked as a Speakers Officer for the LSESU Korea Future Association (LSESU KFA), where she co-organised the Korea Future Week 2021 by proposing, planning, and moderating interdisciplinary panels on migration and ethnic diversity in South Korea, and global city making in Seoul, first as a Speakers Officer and then as Speaker Officer team leader.

She is also a member of the review committee of the Revista de Relaciones Internacionales of the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (National University of Costa Rica).

Vittoria holds a MSc degree in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam; her dissertation was about internal Mongolian migration, unplanned urbanisation, and urban conflicts in Ulaanbaatar’s semi-formal settlements, known as the ger districts. Prior to that, she obtained a BA degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the LUISS Guido Carli University, where she conducted research on Indigenous peoples’ rights in Latin America, multicultural education, and political struggles and resistance in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.

Research interests:

  • Translocality
  • Intersectionality and Social ReproductionTheory (SRT)
  • Remittances
  • Global city making in Northeast Asia
  • Unplanned urbanisation and vernacular housing

Supervisors
Prof Hyun Bang Shin
Prof Claire Mercer

Expertise Details

Transnational Migration; Intersectionality; Remittances; Urbanisation; North-East Asia