Maria Aysa-Lastra is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology at Winthrop University and a non-resident affiliate at ISIM.

Dr. Aysa-Lastra's research focuses on the causes of migration as well the integration of international and forced migrants in their host societies. She has published her research in Journal of Refugee Studies, Rural Sociology, International Journal of Population Research, Journal of Family Violence, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Norteamérica, Revista Internacional de Sociología, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, and Estudios Demográficos y de Desarrollo Urbano. She has contributed several book chapters. Her most recent co-edited two volume is Immigrant Vulnerability and Resilience: Comparative Perspectives on Latin American Immigrants during the Great Recession (Springer 2015). She is currently working on internally displaced persons in urban areas in Colombia.

Maria holds a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University, and BA in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.