Sonia Alda Mejías was a Senior Analyst and Director of the Observatory on Illegal Trafficking and Criminal Networks at the Elcano Royal Institute. She is Lecturer at the Department of International Relations at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas and member of the academic staff at the Master’s on Peace, Security and Defence at the Instituto General Gutierrez Mellado (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED) and at the Master’s on Public Policy Security and Defence at the Universidad Camilo José Cela. She is also a tutor at the UNED for a variety of degrees. She has a PhD in Political Science from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and on several occasions has been a visiting scholar at Tulane University, New Orleans.
She was a researcher in the field of Security and Defence in Latin America at the Instituto General Gutierrez Mellado (UNED) from 20014 to 2014. She has additionally been a visiting researcher at the Centro Estratégico de Estudios Regionales de Seguridad at the Escuela Superior de Guerra (Colombia) and at the Centro de Altos Estudios Nacionales (Perú), and a guest lecturer at the Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), the Universidad Militar de Nueva Granada (Colombia), the Centro de Altos Estudios Nacionales (Peru) and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (Guatemala).
Areas of research: Sonia Alda’s field of expertise is security and defence in Latin America. She has followed various lines of research relating to Defence as a public policy under democratic frameworks regulating civil-military relations. She has also analysed the roles assigned in the region to military and police forces in the new threat scenario. In recent years she has especially focused on organised crime, in an increasingly turbulent context, and security policies.
Selected publications: S. Alda y S. Ferreira (eds.), Escenarios de inseguridad en América Latina y los retos actuales en Colombia, Instituto Universitario General Gutiérrez Mellado (IUGM)-Universidad Militar de Nueva Granada (Colombia), 2017; ‘Las posibilidades de transformación de las fuerzas de seguridad en Colombia, tras el postconflicto’, Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos, June 2016; ‘La debilidad del imperio de la ley en América Latina: un factor para entender la implantación del crimen organizado’, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, nr 37, March 2015; and ‘Estado y crimen organizado en América Latina. Posibles relaciones y complicidades’, Revista Política y Estrategia, nr 124, July-December 2014.