I am a Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, specialising in gender and sexuality, migration, social movements and state power. I use filmmaking, visual arts and curation in my research praxis.
Below are overviews of ongoing projects – see here for publications:
GlobalGRACE Project (Postdoctoral Early Career Researcher)
Researching ‘Space Invading’ in UK Museums and Decolonial Curatorial Practice as part of an international multi-sited project exploring cultures of gender (in)equality and wellbeing. As well as multiple publications, outputs include:
- Curating (and building online archive for) the exhibition Exchanging Cultures of Equality (2018)
- Co-designing curriculum and course content for the Online Course Experiments in Cultures of Equality (2022)
- Curating the complementary live exhibitions (Dis)Locating Cultures of Equality (2021) and online exhibition Re:Locating Cultures of Equality (2022)
- Short films Motion.Stop. (2021) If Museum Walls Could Speak: Space invading and the somatic norm (2022)
Asylum For Sale: Profit and Protest in a Migration Industry
Projects and publications continue to develop around the book Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in a Migration Industry (PM Press, 2020 – UK / US), co-edited with Adrienne Pine – a volume in which scholars, activists, artists and journalists examine how asylum systems function under neoliberal capitalism, and how protesters are resisting violent, extractive migration regimes.
- Podcast: Left/Over episode 18: Speaking Asylum June 2021
- Podcast: Mandatory Redistribution episode 55, November 2020
- Podcast: Asylum for Sale: Capitalism Migration and New Refugee Regimes, November 2020
- Teaching tools website (in development)
LGBTQ+ Asylum
My doctoral research focused on the experiences of LGBT asylum seekers in the United States, and the NGOs that support them. I am currently revising and updating this research for publication as a book (c. 2024). In addition to scholarly publications arising from this research, I have also produced:
- Short film At Home in the Village (2017)
- Stronger Together: A best practices guide to supporting LGBTQ asylum seekers (2015), funded by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation + The National LGBTQ Taskforce
Materiality of protest
I have a longstanding interest in the the materiality of protest. During the Trump administration, I began researching how houses (via lawn signs, flags, and other political statements) became ostensible sites of “resistance” in Washington, D.C. This research was cut short by my relocation to the UK in 2018. However, in connection to this project, I organised the exhibition “Protest Matters!” to coincide with the 2017 American Anthropological Association meetings, which was open to a public audience. I have presented findings related to this research at a number of conferences, and am currently revising a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.