Overview

I am a postdoctoral researcher working on the ASYFAIR project at the University of Exeter – lead by Prof. Nick Gill. The ASYFAIR project is focused on the process of asylum appeals in the European Union and questions the extent to which there can be consistent and fair adjudication of asylum appeals between the EU Member States (see https://asyfair.com/home/). My role on the project is to analyse the ethnographic research data is being produced across our various fieldwork sites, conduct fieldwork in Belgium and publish academic articles based on our collective efforts.

Prior to joining ASYFAIR, I completed my PhD in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh (supervised by Dan Swanton and Julie Cupples). My doctoral work was focused on the networks of power that function across national boundaries in order to enact (or in some cases pull apart) national borders. I was interested in how bordering spaces are created and controlled through the complex interactions between EU institutions and agencies, interior ministries of EU Member States, government ministries of non-EU countries, NGOs, private security companies and border control technologies. In other words, my research aims were not to ‘de-clutter’ spaces of border control, rather I sought to evaluate how the practices of border control involve the lashing together of various actors in order to perform the border on a daily basis.

On a side note, I am also interested in the policies, legislation and bio-economic models that are used to calculate the impact of invasive species (both flora and fauna). My MSc in ‘Ecological Economics’ (University of Edinburgh) consisted of adapting existing bio-economic models to predict the possible spread and economic cost of an ‘Asian Longhorn beetle’ population outbreak in the south of England. I first started my academic journey at the University of Cambridge (Geography), where my interest in issues of race, critical geopolitics and state violence and biogeography were first peaked.

Broad research specialisms:

• Political Geography
• Critical Geopolitics
• Migration and border control
• Surveillance and security
• Mobility
• Assemblage theory
• Legal Geography
• Social & Cultural Geography
• Ethnography
• Participatory Action Research

Qualifications

BA (Cambridge), MSc (Edinburgh), PhD (Edinburgh)

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