Ainara Huarte holds an MSc in Political Geography from the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Her areas of interest span from migration, political geography and geopolitics to urban governance and policy analysis. Ainara joined GRITIM-UPF as the head office of EuroMedMig, an independent interdisciplinary research platform promoting Mediterranean Migration Research, coordinated by Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Ibrahim Awad (American University El Cairo). She previously worked at the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) as Junior Research Fellow, as a researcher and project manager for a project on sustainable urban futures at a consulting firm, as a Research Editor for Sub-Saharan countries at Dow Jones & Co, and as a trainee at the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). She has also consulted as a freelancer for United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) within the framework of the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project (MC2CM), and for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), together with Conscious Consultants, preparing countries’ migration situational analysis.