Lara obtained her PhD from SOAS University of London, centre of Gender Studies in November 2013 and is currently a temporary lecturer on China and East Asian studies at the School of Language and Area Studies, University of Portsmouth. She received her M.A. International Communication Studies from National Chengchi University of Taiwan in 2008, with a thesis on community communication practices for mainland Chinese women married to Taiwanese men. She graduated in Oriental Studies at Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2003, majoring in Chinese language and culture with a thesis on the Chinese penal system and human rights violations. 

Lara's PhD project aimed at investigating a phenomenon that has emerged in the last thirty years in Taiwan, namely the migration of females from Asian countries to Taiwan with the purpose of marrying. In Taiwan this form of migration involves primarily women from Mainland China. By drawing from the literature on transnational migration and social movements in the cyberspace, this project provided a thorough overview of how Chinese spouses have gained access to resources, information, welfare and the labour market by means of a digital platform created with the help of their Taiwanese partners. Framed by a literature on transnational migration and social movements, this project attempted to explore, through the lenses of gender, a phenomenon that has been affected by the diplomatic relations between China and Taiwan. Its main aim was to contribute to the literature on marriage migration bringing a new and more complex picture of the phenomenon and depicting spouses in a public, rather than private, sphere. The questions this project tackled are, for example, how do broader social, political and economic forces influence Mainland Chinese marriage migrants’ agency? How is the Internet used by Chinese spouses as a way to initiate social action? How is the digital platform gendered?