Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies at University College London, where she is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Southern Responses to Displacement project (@SouthernResp) and of the AHRC-ESRC-funded project, Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria (@RefugeeHosts); she is also Co-Director of the Migration Research Unit and Director of the Refuge in a Moving World interdisciplinary research network based at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies. Elena is a leading figure in the field of migration and refugee studies, having been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2015, in recognition of her research into humanitarian responses to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East, and the 2013 Lisa Gilad Prize by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) for ‘the most innovative and thoughtful contribution to the advancement of refugee studies.’
Since the mid-2000s, Elena’s research has focused on experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement, with a particular focus on the Middle East. She has conducted extensive research in refugee camps and urban areas including in Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, France, Lebanon, South Africa, Syria, Sweden, and the UK. Drawing on a critical theoretical perspective, her work contributes to key debates surrounding refugees’ and local host community members’ experiences of conflict-induced displacement, the nature of refugee-host-donor relations, and both North-South and South-South responses to forced migration.
Her Southern Responses to Displacement project examines how responses to Syrian refugees have been developed and implemented by diverse states from across the co-called ‘global South’ (ie from Algeria to Cuba to Malaysia), regional organisations (such as the African Union and the Arab League), transnational civil society networks (including faith-based networks), and local community members and established refugee groups themselves. The project builds upon Elena’s long-standing research into both ‘South-South humanitarianism’ and ‘Southern’ approaches to researching displacement, which she has explored, inter alia, in South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East (Routledge, 2015, 2017), The Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations (Routledge, 2019) and in her introduction to the 2020 special issue of Migration and Society on ‘Recentering the South in studies of Migration’. You can follow Elena’s work at www.southernresponses.org and @FiddianQasmiyeh.
Elena’s recent publications include:
Refuge in a Moving World. Tracing refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines. (UCL Press, 2020) Open Access and free to download here.
The Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations (Routledge, 2019) (co-editor with Patricia Daley)
South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East (Routledge, 2015, 2017)
The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival (Syracuse University Press, 2014)
Elena is also the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014, 2016), and of Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads (Palgrave, 2016).