I am a part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute with a secondary appointment in the Department of Social and Political Sciences. I am also a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute. I hold a PhD (DPhil) in International Development from the University of Oxford.
My research and teaching interests include youth and child protection; political violence and forced displacement; irregular migration; post-conflict reintegration; and qualitative research methods. My work is informed by field research and professional experience with humanitarian organizations in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia and Italy.
My co-edited textbook, Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical was published with SAGE in 2024. My monograph (under review, Cambridge University Press) is an ethnographic exploration of the ways Palestinian refugee youth experience and respond to coercion in their everyday lives in East Jerusalem.
My work has been published or is forthcoming in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, Child Abuse and Neglect, Public Anthropologist, Journal of Palestine Studies, Qualitative Research and Teaching Anthropology. My research has been funded by the ESRC, the European Commission and CIVICA Erasmus+.
Alongside my academic research, I work with humanitarian and human rights organizations to support evidence based programming and evaluations of humanitarian responses.
Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical
SAGE 2024
Edited by Caitlin Procter and Branwen Spector
This textbook aims to change the way ethnographic methods are taught, by centering the question: How can you do ethnographic field research in a safe way for you and the people you work with?
With contributions from researchers across the globe, each chapter discusses core challenges faced by ethnographers, reflecting on research from preparation to dissemination and how identity interacts with the realities of doing fieldwork. The book:
Promotes an inclusive approach that invites you to learn from the challenges faced by a diverse range of scholars.
Addresses underexplored issues including emotional and physical safety in the face of ableism, homophobia and racism.
Challenges assumptions of what it means to produce knowledge by conducting fieldwork.
Other recent publications
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Reintegration challenges for returnees from Al Hol to Der Ezzor
IMPACT CSRD: Policy Report. With Sinéad Barry.
Thousands of women and children have returned from Al-Hol Camp to different places in Syria since 2019. There is little known about the post return circumstances and challenges these women and children face, and more importantly, any assessment of the perceived usefulness of the reintegration programs delivered to them. This study contributes to filling this gap.
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A Roadtrip Through Gaza
Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture. Edited by Matthew Teller and Mahmoud Muna (Saqqi Books: 2024). Chapter.
A ping on your Kareem app – Uber’s equivalent in Gaza: “your taxi has arrived”. Outside the entrance of your beach front hotel in Gaza city, a long yellow cab picks you up to start a day trip around some of Gaza’s tourist attractions. Your driver takes you north…
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Chapter 10 in Inclusive Ethnography
Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical. Procter, C. and Spector, B. (Eds.) London: SAGE (2024)
This chapter is grounded in a broad understanding of the scope for violence and fieldwork to interact. It moves away from the assumption that ‘violent fieldwork’ only happens in specifically ‘violent places’, and invites readers to consider if and how their topic or fieldsite might engage with questions of violence.
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Made in Italy: is excellence without exploitation possible?
Debate Migration Migration policy Centre Blog. With Leila Giannetto and Caterina F. Guidi. 01.08.2024
One month ago, Satnam Singh died in a hospital south of Rome. A fruit wrapping machine had severed the Indian farm worker’s arms and fractured his legs. Instead of calling emergency services, his employer drove him home and left him at his front door, his dismembered arm in a vegetable collection box beside him. In this blog, we highlight growing evidence that those who harvest food proudly branded as Made in Italy continue to live, work and in cases like Singh, die in a state of privation.
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Coerced Migration: mobility under siege in Gaza
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50(10): 2359-2383
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2312229
This article, based on field research conducted between 2018 and 2019 centres the role of Israeli state coercion in the migration of young Palestinians from Gaza. I map existing data on international migration from Gaza, which has been under siege since 2007. I then draw from qualitative data gathered during fieldwork in Gaza to explain how migration in a context of a siege can best be understood.
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What does genocide do to migration categories?
Debate Migration Migration Policy Centre Blog 11.10.2024
The mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza over the past year raises urgent questions for migration policymakers and researchers about how we understand and categorise migration. Traditional migration and displacement definitions, shaped by historical narratives and legal frameworks, struggle to capture the reality of repeated forced movement within confined spaces under siege. This blog explores the inadequacies of current legal categories during and following the repeated evacuations ordered by the Israeli military.
