Meet María Villares, Research Fellow for CREME

María Villares has started working as a Research Fellow at CREME carrying out research in the field of ethnic minority business and small firms. María joined the Business School in May 2014 after working as a researcher since 2010 at the International Migration Institute (University of Oxford) in the projects ‘The Drivers and Dynamics of High-Skilled Migration’ and ‘The Determinants of International Migration’ (DEMIG). She completed her PhD entitled 'Immigration and Entrepreneurship in Spain: the Differential Mobilization of Financial, Human and Social Capital'.

Her research explores the impact of financial and human capital on the mobilization of social capital for the entrepreneurial strategies of Latin Americans in Spain. Her research interests include: immigrant entrepreneurship; family businesses; gender and intergenerational dynamics; high-skilled migration; labour market incorporation for migrants, Latin American and Caribbean migration.

María was also involved in the OECD-funded project 'Latin American Immigration to OECD Countries'; the 5th Framework Project 'The Chances of Second Generation Family Members of Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Intergenerational and Gender Aspects of Quality of Life Processes' (co-ordinated by Frankfurt am Main University); and the European Social Fund project 'EQUAL CONVIVE +: Labour Incorporation of Immigrants as Self-Employees'. She has been a visiting scholar at COMPAS (University of Oxford); IMES (University of Amsterdam); School of Social Sciences and Law (Oxford Brookes); and ERCOMER (University of Utrecht).