Background

During the 2017-2018 AY I will be at the Institute for Advanced Study (School of Social Science) in Princeton.

Background 

Before joining Newcastle in 2015, I was a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology and a Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow (Clare Hall) at the University of Cambridge. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Research

My research interests lie in political sociology, urban sociology, race, citizenship and displacement, law & society, policing and security, humanitarianism, the sociology of emotions, and ethnography. I have published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Theory & Society, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Law & Society Review, Political Power & Social Theory, International Sociology, and City. I have also published public sociology essays and review essays in British Journal of Sociology, Contexts, and Merip.

At the Institute for Advanced Studies, I am finishing a book out of a decade-long ethnographic fieldwork in the West Bank and urban Israel. This book, titled Together, Apart: Suspect Lives in West Bank Camps and Israeli Cities, is under contract with Oxford University Press. 

Since 2015 I have extended my ethnographic focus on the Mediterranean area with a new project on global displacement and local urban marginalities in peripheral Europe, especially the Italian South. This project tentatively titled Injuries of Refuge: Refugees and Chains of Marginality in an Unequal Europe examines old and new marginalities in the context of  (post)colonial histories of mobility, refugee reception, and border formation.

I am also co-editor (with Dr Romola Sanyal, LSE Geography) of a book, titled Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge, under contract with Manchester University Press. This book draws on cases from different regions of the world to undertake a critical examination of the shifting mechanisms and unequal paths underpinning the global humanitarian management of displacement.

Role and Responsibilities

From September 2018, I will be the MA Degree Programme Director (Sociology).

2016-2017: Co-organizer of the Sociology Seminar Series.

2015-2017: Combined Honours Subject Advisor for Sociology.

Research

My research interests lie in political sociology, urban sociology, race, citizenship and displacement, law & society, policing and security, humanitarianism, the sociology of emotions, and ethnography.

My research focuses on four intersecting themes:

1. Structures and experiences of displacement.

2. Emotions and politics in securitized societies.

3. The relationship between law and morality.

4. Militarism, surveillance and urban life.

Along these lines, in my published work, I have addressed the following issues:

- how collective emotions relate to--subvert, follow or amplify--histories and structures of control (Law & Society Review 2013).

- how transnational and entrapping processes combine in contexts of forced displacement (Ethnic & Racial Studies 2015).

- how militarism and surveillance are experienced in everyday life at the level of moral-political dispositions (Theory & Society 2015; Political Power and Social Theory 2012).

- how a comparative approach to refugees and the urban poor can problematize fixed assumptions about refugee subjectivities, citizenship, and cities (City 2015).

- how confinement and informality interact-combine or clash-in shaping structures and experiences of urban marginality (International Sociology 2017).

My research on issues of displacement, urban militarism, and securitization has mainly been carried out through intensive ethnographic engagement with and across the West Bank and Urban Israel. I am currently finishing a book out of a decade-long ethnographic fieldwork in the West Bank and urban Israel. This book, titled Together, Apart: Suspect Lives in West Bank Camps and Israeli Cities, is under contract with Oxford University Press

Since 2015 I have extended my ethnographic focus on the Mediterranean area with a new project on global displacement and local urban marginalities in peripheral Europe, especially the Italian South. This project tentatively titled Injuries of Refuge: Refugees and Chains of Marginality in an Unequal Europe examines old and new marginalities in the context of  (post)colonial histories of mobility, refugee reception, and border formation.

I am also co-editor (with Dr Romola Sanyal, LSE Geography) of a book, titled Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge, under contract with Manchester University Press. This book draws on cases from different regions of the world to undertake a critical examination of the shifting mechanisms and unequal paths underpinning the global humanitarian management of displacement.

Postgraduate Supervision

I would be happy to discuss potential postgraduate supervision with any student interested in working on any of the following topics: surveillance and the security state; humanitarianism and refugees; moral economies of justice; emotions and political action; militarism and the city; urban marginality.

Currently supervising:

Ankita Mukherjee (Newcastle University Research Excellence Academy Funding).Exploring the discriminatory practices and social support networks of the Hijra community: A qualitative study of the 'third gender' in Delhi. Co-supervised with Diane Richardson.

Silvia Maritati (Newcastle University Research Excellence Academy Funding). Asylum, Inequality, and Sense of Place in Peripheral Europe. Co-supervised with Cathrine Degnen.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching:

SOC2085 Refugees and Displacement: Borders, Asylum, and Camps (second year, second semester).

SOC1032 Politics and Society (first year, second semester).

Publications