Profile
VM CCDP

Victoria Motta De Lamare Franca

PhD Researcher in International Relations/Political Science
Research Assistant at the Centre on Conflict Development & Peacebuilding
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Spoken languages
Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, German

PhD Thesis
 

Provisional PhD Thesis Title: Re-forming, Trans-forming, and De-forming Security Sector Reform: The Politics of Expertise in Shaping Global Statebuilding Practices

PhD Completion Date: 2027

PhD Supervisor: Anna Leander and Keith Krause

In my doctoral research, I suggest that proposals to inform changes in Security Sector Reform (SSR) practices come from a claim of expertise that delineates what interpretations are deemed credible and, therefore, acceptable. My goal is to understand and disturb how expertise plays a role in imagining a “second generation” of global statebuilding practices, discussing how re-forming SRR entails its trans-formation and de-formation.  
 

PROFILE
 

Victoria Motta de Lamare França is a Research Assistant at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding (CCDP), working on the project State-building and the Global Practices of Security Sector Reform, and a PhD Researcher in the International Relations & Political Science department. She obtained an MA in International Relations and a BA in International Relations with Complement Studies in Conflict Mediation and Restorative Practices at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). 
 

Research Interests
 

  • Security Sector Reform
  • Politics of Expertise
  • International Political Sociology
  • Politics of Translation
     

Publications and Works
 

  • Fontes Santos, Pablo, Motta de Lamare França, Victoria, Rego Monteiro da Luz, Cristina., & Leite Lessa, Monica. (2025). Humanization, Dehumanization, and Spectacularization: The Semiotics of UNICEF’s Unfairy Tales. International Political Sociology, 19(1), olaf004. 
  • França, Victoria M. L. (2024). The UN Community Liaison Assistants and the Politics of Translation: Mediating Protection. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Pablo Victor Fontes & Victoria Motta de Lamare França (2023) The reproduction of American identities in Somalia through terrorism and ethnicity, Critical Studies on Security, 12(1), 48–65.
  • França, Victoria. (2023). Em busca do desorientalizar das narrativas: uma genealogia do “Congo” (re)imaginado [In search of the disorientalisation of narratives: a genealogy of the (re)imagined “Congo”]. In I. Siqueira & V. Costa (Eds.), Metodologia e Relações Internacionais: Debates Contemporâneos Vol. IV (pp. 143–164). Editora PUC-Rio.
  • Macedo, A., Siman, M., & Motta, V. (2022). Proteção, Poder, Política: uma leitura foucaultiana do discurso de Proteção de Civis em operações de paz [Protection, Power, Politics: a Foucauldian reading of the Protection of Civilians discourse in peace operations]. In G. Duarte & L. Carvalho (Eds.), Azul da cor da paz?: perspectivas e debates sobre as operações de paz da ONU (pp. 122–130). PUC-Minas.