In October 2018, I joined the Geography Department at Durham University as an Assistant Professor in Human Geography. In my new role I’ll be continuing my research on mobilities, urbanization, risk and the production of various kinds of value/s in the East African neighborhood. My scholarship is increasingly interested in understanding the complex socialities on which economies rely. For over 15 years, my work and scholarship has focused on the experiences of both forced and economic migrants as they seek to reconstruct their lives and livelihoods in the wake of conflict. Together with Professor Loren Landau and Dr. Serawit Debele, I also run the Academy for African Urban Diversity, a graduate training workshop to support scholarship on mobilities, migration and diversity in urban Africa.
Before coming to Durham I spent four years as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. I have held teaching positions at the Pennsylvania State University (African Studies) and the University of Washington (Geography). I earned a doctorate in Geography from the University of Washington, along with a MSc in Forced Migration from Oxford, and a BS in Environmental Economics and Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.
I have also held visiting positions at the University of Juba, in South Sudan, the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law. Before returning to academia, I worked for more than five years at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a drop-in legal clinic providing pro-bono assistance to immigrants and asylum seekers. Their courage and dignity continues to inspire me.
My research has been generously supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Bucerius Scholarship in Migration Studies, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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