Patricia Weiss Fagen is a non-resident affiliate at ISIM. She was a Senior Associate until her retirement in July 2012. Following a career in academia, Patricia entered the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1988. She served in Washington DC as External Relations officer and from 1991-1993 as the Chief of Mission in El Salvador. During 1995-96 she was on loan to the UN Research Institute for Social Development, as senior associate of the War Torn Societies Project, and from 1996-2000 she worked in the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank and as a consultant with the Inter American Development Bank, the US Peace Corps, the Christian Michelsen Institute (Norway) and the IDRC (Canada). During 2011- 2012 she spent 10 months as a Senior Fellow at the US Institute for Peace in Washington DC.

While at ISIM she wrote extensively on aspects of war to peace transitions in a number of countries, focusing especially on domestic and international migration patterns and institution building in conflict and post conflict contexts. She also has published articles and chapters on the impacts of remittances and diasporas in conflict prone and fragile countries, especially Haiti. Her recent research has been focused on original research and evaluations related to return and integration of refugees and internally displaced persons. Her current work examines crisis migration and its impacts on cities.

Patricia holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and has published a number of works related to Latin American history, human rights law and policy, political asylum and refugee issues, and post-conflict reconstruction.