Visiting Scholars / Visiting Student Researchers
Bios reflect scholars’ status at the time of their appointment at the Center for Race and Gender.
Vikki Bell
VIKKI BELL
VISITING SCHOLAR (JAN - APR 2023)
Vikki Bell is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she convenes the Cultural Analysis pathway of the MA programme and is the Director of Postgraduate Research. She has several decades of engagement with critical, feminist, post-structuralist, post- and decolonial theory as well as with photography, contemporary art and film. Her research has addressed transitional justice within societies emerging from periods of conflict, with a focus on Latin America and an emphasis on questions of aesthetics and ethics.
Vikki is the author of four monographs, including Culture and Performance (Berg, 2007) and The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina (Routledge, 2014), and has also written over fifty academic articles and chapters. She is currently completing a further book on the complexities of ‘propositions of memory’ in archives, artworks and memory sites in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, including the implications of creating archives and making artworks from the ruins and remnants that remain in post-conflict worlds. She is a former editor of Social & Legal Studies and Theory, Culture & Society.
Her research has attracted funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Newton Fund and the Economic & Social Research Council (UK). She has also been part of a team receiving funds from CONICYT, Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnologíca, Chile. Most recently she was the PI on a British Academy funded project called ‘Documentality & Display: Archiving and Curating the Violent Past in Argentina, Chile and Colombia’(Grant: SDP2\100242). She is also a senior researcher on the interdisciplinary VIODEMOS project that studies violence in democracy in Chile.
Some of Vikki’s publications are: 'Documenting Dictatorship: Writing and Resistance in Chile's Vicaría de la Solidaridad' Theory, Culture & Society (2020); ‘”Always Another Breath in My Breath”: On Denise Riley, the polyvocality of the subject and poetry’ Feminist Theory (2020) Vol 23 Issue 3 pp317-329; ‘The Sigh of Sorrow and the Force of Art: On the artwork of Erika Diettes’ Wasafiri 2020 Vol 35, No. 4 pp21-31, and the report ‘Archives of Violence: Case Studies from South America’ (2021) Co-authored with Oriana Bernasconi, Jaime Hernandez-García and Cecilia Sosa London: Goldsmiths ISBN 9781913380281. Further back, she published Feminist Imagination (Sage, 1999) was the editor of the influential collection Performativity and Belonging (Sage, 1999).
Sofi Jansson-Keshavarz
SOFI JANSSON-KESHAVARZ
VISITING STUDENT RESEARCHER (JAN - MAY 2023)
Sofi Jansson-Keshavarz is a PhD candidate in Welfare Law at Linköping University in Sweden. In her PhD she investigates the implications of temporary legality for access to the right to permanent residency. By looking at how immigration regulation intertwined with welfare regulation at the municipal level escapes the national scale of citizenship, the thesis seeks to understand the local variations of mechanisms of access to permanent residency and citizenship in the welfare state of Sweden today as they are regulated and negotiated on a local level through material conditions tied to housing, work, education, etc.
Sofi has a background in Global Development Studies and International Migration and Ethnic Relations and previously has done research on histories of detention practices in Sweden. She has experience of working with reception policies of “unaccompanied children” in different municipalities and has been involved in networks of support for people living in irregularized conditions.
Rachel Rosenbloom
RACHEL ROSENBLOOM
VISITING SCHOLAR (JAN - MAY 2023)
Rachel Rosenbloom is Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law, where she teaches courses on immigration law, refugee and asylum law, and administrative law. She is a Faculty Fellow at Northeastern’s Center for Law, Equity and Race. Rachel is the co-founder of Northeastern’s Immigrant Justice Clinic and was co-director of the clinic from 2017 to 2020. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Cadiz in 2016 and a visiting professor at Yale Law School in 2017. Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern, she was a Human Rights Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College and the supervising attorney for the center’s Post-Deportation Human Rights Project. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law and the role of race and immigration enforcement in the construction of U.S. citizenship. She is currently writing a book on the history of efforts to restrict constitutional birthright citizenship from the 1880s to the Trump Administration.
Christine Jacobsen
CHRISTINE JACOBSEN
VISITING SCHOLAR (DEC 2022)
Christine M. Jacobsen is a Professor of Social Anthropology working mainly in the fields of Gender Studies and International Migration and Ethnic Relations. Currently, Jacobsen heads a 3-year research project funded by the Research Council of Norway, Waiting for an uncertain future: the temporalities of irregular migration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with irregularized migrants in Marseille, Jacobsen is currently writing a book with the working title Un/documented lives in Marseille.
Jacobsen’s work on irregularized migration also includes the project Provision of welfare to irregular migrants, which she headed from 2011 – 2015. PROVIR investigated the complex relationship between law, institutional practice, and irregular migrants’ lived experiencesin Norway. Some of the major findings from the project are presented in the co-edited volume Eksepsjonell velferd: Irregulære migranter i det norske velferdssamfunnet
Jacobsen has worked for a number of years on gendered religious traditions, identities and practices among Muslims in France and Norway, in a context of international migration, globalization and secular modernity. In 2011, she published Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway (Brill), and co-edited a special issue of Feminist Review on "Islam and Gender in Europe: Subjectivities, Politics & Piety". Within the frames of the RCN-funded project Secularism and Religious freedom in the Global Era (REGREL), Jacobsen shifted attention from ‘religious traditions’ to ‘secular formations’; looking at gender and sexuality in the legal and para-legal government of religious practices (such as female covering) in Norway and France.
Jacobsen has also worked on Prostitution, Gender and Migration (PROGEMI), and on transnationalism and political mobilization among young adults of minority background (TRANSNAT). Learn more.
Marry-Anne Karlsen
MARRY-ANNE KARLSEN
VISITING SCHOLAR (DEC 2022)
Marry-Anne Karlsen is a researcher at Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK). She has a background in human geography and social anthropology. Her research interests cover migration, the welfare state, and border politics. Her most recent book Migration Control and Access to Welfare: The Precarious Inclusion of Irregular Migrants in Norway was published as an open access monograph on Routledge (2021).
Karlsen is currently heading a work package for the RCN-funded project, TemPro: Temporary protection as a durable solution? The 'return turn' in asylum policies in Europe which investigates the increased use of temporary terms of asylum for people with a recognized need for protection in Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the UK. The project is a collaboration between legal scholars and ethnographers. Karlsen co-edit with Jessica Schultz the living web resource Interdisciplinarity in Migration Research: Combining law and anthropology.
Karlsen is also part of the EU-funded project PROTECT: The Right to International Protection. A Pendulum between Globalization and Nativization? As part of this project, she has conducted fieldwork in Cádiz, Spain on the field level governance of migration and refugee protection.
From 2016-2020, Karlsen worked as a postdoctoral fellow on the RCN-funded project Waiting for an uncertain future: the temporalities of irregular migration (WAIT). Here she uses temporality as an analytical lens to examine power relations and experiences related to irregularized migration. Together with Christine Jacobsen and Shahram Khosravi, she co-edited the volume Waiting and the Temporalities of irregular migration, which provides theoretical and empirical nuance to the concept of waiting in migration research. The volume, published on Routledge (2021), is open access, and can be freely downloaded.
Karlsen is a board member of IMER Bergen International Migration and Ethnic Relations Research Unit Bergen), which she previously led (2018-2021). She is a former board member of Nordic Migration Research and the Norwegian Network for Migration Research. Learn more.
Marijke Bassani
MARIJKE BASSANI
VISITING SCHOLAR (AUG 2022 - AUG 2023)
Marijke Bassani is a Lamalama, Binthi Warra and Bulgun Warra Aboriginal woman who hails from the sovereign lands of the Guugu Yimithirr people located in the Cape York Peninsula, in rural northern Australia. She is also a Human Rights Lawyer, Lecturer, Advocate, American Australian Association Scholar, Roberta Sykes Scholar and Cape York Leaders Program Ambassador and past Scholar. Marijke currently sits on the National LGBTI Human Rights Subcommittee at Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and is a Visiting Scholar/Student Researcher at the Center for Race & Gender where she is completing an international cross-border PhD in Law.
Marijke is multlilingual and specialises in International Law with a focus on human rights relating to Indigeneity, race, gender and sexuality. Her PhD study is a combination of these passions with a twofold objective. Through an International Human Rights Law lens, Marijke is exploring the invisibility/hypervisibility of Indigenous LGBTQI+ Sistergirl and Brotherboy Australians within the legal system (Domestic and International). Her study draws upon the literature and lived experiences of Native Americans/American Indians who express diverse gender and sexual identities to better interpret, and critically analyse, the contextual themes of her study as they relate to Indigeneity, race, gender, sexuality and the law. Marijke is also using an Indigenous Queer Theory framework to analyse the intersections—and unique position—that Indigenous gender and sexuality diverse peoples currently occupy within their communities in both Australia and the United States, which involves examining the multidimensional forms of discrimination they face. As part of the study, Marijke is also making space for decolonising diverse gender and sexual identities in ways that are meaningful to Indigenous LGBTQI+ 2Spirit, Sistergirl and Brotherboy peoples. This includes allowing space for the emergence of terminology and conceptualisations that more closely align with the cultural, social, historical, linguistic traditions and wisdoms of their respective communities and tribes.
Prior to her PhD and advocacy work in the International Human Rights Law space, Marijke practiced as a Solicitor in Discrimination Law, Criminal Law, Housing and Tenancy Law, Native Title Law and Commercial Litigation which involved Dispute Resolution and Personal and Property Liability. Marijke’s tertiary academic background commenced with graduating with a double Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Politics and Government from Griffith University. She then went on to complete a Master of Laws specialising in International Law at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) where she was honoured with an Excellence Award from the Vice Chancellor for her outstanding academic performance. Marijke has taught clinical legal education at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) which involved supervising Undergraduate and Juris Doctorate Law students during their clinical legal placements, and providing practical guidance on culturally safe engagement with Indigenous Australian clients. Marijke also provides guest lectures for undergraduate and postgraduate law courses on human rights relating to Indigenous women and Indigenous LGBTQI+ 2Spirit, Sistergirl and Brotherboy peoples.
Outside of her life in the law Marijke is a moonrise and moonset chaser, mum to needy dramatic plants, meditator, Tupac and Kendrick fan, wholesome cook, avid journaler, amateur photographer, lover of all ice cream/gelato/froyo, wanna-be wine connoisseur, sunset watcher, Lo-fi music listener, yogi, healing podcasts enthusiast, star gazer, coffee snob, ocean mermaid and eternal admirer of all sacred lands, ancestral wisdoms and cultural traditions belonging to fellow Indigenous cousins from across the world.
Here are some of Marijke’s recent publications and opinion pieces, including podcast interviews about her research and journey navigating life as a multilingual Aboriginal woman with a diverse sexuality:
https://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/podcast-ep15-a-yarn-with-marijke-bassani-part-1/
https://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/podcast-ep16-a-yarn-with-marijke-bassani-part-2/
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/biglaw/31532-the-facade-of-auslaw-s-social-justice-efforts
Saniya Amraoui
SANIYA AMRAOUI
VISITING STUDENT RESEARCHER (SPRING 2022)
Saniya Amraoui is a Fulbright-Schuman Visiting Scholar at the CRG and Berkeley Law and a PhD researcher in Law at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy.
Saniya uses critical approaches to the law (CRT and TWAIL among others) to question the role of the law and its impact on migrants’ lives in Europe with a focus on the European Union and its legal framework. Her PhD investigates the concept of conditionality in EU migration law by looking at the conditions migrants have to bear and/or fulfill from crossing EU borders to obtaining a residence permit. To explore further this legal process and with the use of time and space dimensions, Saniya looks for the rationales (racial discrimination, migrants’ economic value, othering) behind the rules and their justifications. Her research also explores migrants’ forms of resistance to constraining laws and policies with fieldwork conducted in Palermo, Italy.
Before joining the EUI, Saniya obtained a B.A. in political science and Middle-Eastern and North African studies from Sciences Po Paris. She pursed legal studies and graduated from Sciences Po Law School and Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas in European law and litigation. Throughout her education and due to her personal background, Saniya developed a keen interest for migration studies from a legal perspective. Other areas of interest are gender studies, social movements, cultural heritage and Islamic studies