Main research and teaching areas:

• Anthropology of Migration
• Political Anthropology
• Ethnographic Methods
   

Current research

My research interests are mainly found in political anthropology and migration studies, with a specialization in refugees and diasporic practices. I am interested in social memory, gender and home in relation to violent political conflict and flight. Most of my research has been related to Palestinian refugees.

I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Gothenburg. My doctoral thesis from 2009 builds on a one-year ethnographic fieldwork in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. In short, the thesis dealt with the many ways that the camp inhabitants tried to maintain continuity, morality and a normal order despite repeated emergencies during the second intifada. I have also done research about Danes and Swedes with Palestinian backgrounds and their diasporic practices, while being a post doc at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. In addition, I have carried out fieldwork in UN-run schools for Palestinian refugee children, focusing on processes of gendered identity formations. Another project focused on the encounters between newly arrived refugees and staff at the Swedish Public Employment Service. I was particularly interested in how the refugees’ experiences of violence are dealt with in those meetings and in the moral issues and bureaucratic tactics that emerge. I also have an ongoing project about urban gardening as a tool to create social bonds and 'integration.'

I have experience of teaching, supervising and examining undergraduate as well as graduate students of Social Anthropology and of interdisciplinary courses such as Global Studies, Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies. Before starting my current employment at the Division of Social Anthropology I worked at the University of Gothenburg, Copenhagen University and at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University.
 

Projects

Cultivating Swedish-ness? Urban gardening and social inclusion among refugees (2017-2019)

Research environment

Family, Migration and Welfare (FAMIV)
Anthropology and Mobility Network (ANTHROMOB), European Association of Social Anthropologists
 

Press/Media

Palestinian territories
Refugees in Sweden