Maria Hagan is a researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and a member of the Health, Care and the Body programme group. She joined the UvA in late 2023 after receiving a VENI grant from the NWO (Dutch Research Council) to work on the injury of migrating people in European border zones. She previously worked in the northern French and northern Moroccan borderlands, on what she calls "contingent camps": fleeting forms of encampment that emerge when migrant people's living sites are constantly destroyed. She has also worked on the criminalisation of those who show solidarity towards migrating people in France and Morocco.
Maria obtained her BA(Hons) in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and her MA(Res) in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam. After obtaining her PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge in 2022 and teaching in Geography and International Development at the UvA, she worked as a research associate in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.