A Conversation on Immigration (04/21/26) [RESCHEDULED]
RESCHEDULED: Join us for a conversation with BU Maxwell Professor of Political Science Elizabeth F. Cohen and Boston Globe Immigration Reporter Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio. This event was originally scheduled on February 24, 2026 and was postponed due to the blizzard. New date and time are confirmed for April 21, 2026 at 12:30pm.
Please REGISTER on Eventbrite.
Elizabeth F. Cohen is the Maxwell Professor of United States Citizenship in the Department of Political Science at Boston University and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Political Science. She received a BA from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has been a visiting scholar at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, Russell Sage Foundation and the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University.
Cohen is the author of four books: Illegal: How America’s Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All (Basic Books, 2020); The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2018; winner of 2019 APSA Best Book in Migration and Citizenship); Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Citizenship (with Cyril Ghosh) (Polity Press, 2019). Her scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in venues such as Ethics in International Affairs, Citizenship Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Polity, Ethics, and the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy.
In addition to her scholarly writing, Cohen has also published op-eds in newspapers such as the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico and El Pais.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio joined the Globe in July 2024as an immigration reporter. Previously, she worked as an immigration reporter at Documented, a nonprofit news site that covers New York City’s immigrant communities and policies that affect them. At Documented, she covered the migrant crisis in New York extensively, and published stories about the conditions in city-run shelters, the exploitation of newly-arrived migrant workers, and the effects of housing instability on migrant families. She also covered immigration detention and immigration courts.
Before that, she was a national reporting fellow for the New York Times, writing about any and all national news — including COVID-19, the 2020 election, mass shootings and extreme weather events. McDonnell Nieto del Rio is a native Spanish speaker and has reported on breaking news as an intern for her hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times. She has also worked for CNN in New York and Washington D.C. She holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Williams College, and earned her master’s from Columbia Journalism School.