Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s research examines experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement, with a particular focus on diverse forms of Southern-led responses to displacement and a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. She has conducted extensive research in refugee camps and urban areas including in Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, South Africa, Syria, Sweden, and the UK.

More about Professor Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Elena is the Co-Director of UCL's Migration Research Unit, and is the Founder and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies Refuge in a Moving World research network across UCL. She is currently the PI of a multi-sited project funded by the European Research Council, South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (Southern Responses website and Southern Responses Twitter account). Between 2016-2021, she was PI of a 4-year AHRC-ESRC funded project, 'Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria' (see www.refugeehosts.org and @RefugeeHosts), and between 2017-2020, she was joint PI of a 3-year project funded by the British Council-USA entitled Religion and Social Justice for Refugees. Elena is currently Co-I on the AHRC Network Plus programme, Imagining Futures through [Un]Archived Pasts, where she is jointly leading the Baddawi Camp Lab with Yousif M. Qasmiyeh. Elena is External Affiliate Convenor of the South-South Forum at Dartmouth College, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Her recent publications include The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival (Syracuse University Press, 2014), South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East , (Routledge, 2015, paperback published in 2017), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (co-editor, Oxford University Press, 2014), the Handbook of South-South Relations (co-editor, Routledge, 2018, pb 2020), Refuge in a Moving World: Refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines (editor, UCL Press, 2020 - Open Access), and 'Recentering the South in Studies of Migration' (the introduction to the special issue of Migration and Society of the same title).

In 2018, Elena was awarded the Provost’s Established Career Academic Public Engagement Award for “catalysing the development of UCL-wide public engagement activities in relation to support for refugees and displaced people and the impact of [her] own research on humanitarian policy and practice.” In 2015, Elena was awarded a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of 'the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising.' In 2013, she was awarded the 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' in 2011 and 2012 (in recognition of her article 'The pragmatics of performance: putting 'faith' in aid in the Sahrawi refugee camps').

Elena is Co-Editor of the new journal, Migration and Society, with Mette Berg (UCL-IOE).

Professional History

2018 (1 Oct) - Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies, University College London
2016 (1 Oct) - Reader in Human Geography, University College London
2014 (1 Sep) – 2016 (31 Sep) Lecturer in Human Geography, University College London
2014 (Jan – Aug), Senior Research Officer, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford
2010 – 2013, Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford
2010 – 2012, Director of the RSC International Summer School in Forced Migration, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford
2009 – 2010, Senior Teaching Fellow in Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
2008 – 2009, Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Education

2009, DPhil International Development, University of Oxford
2003, MA International Relations, University of New South Wales
2002, MSc Gender and Development, London School of Economics, University of London
2000, BA(Hons), MA Social and Political Sciences, King’s College, University of Cambridge

Additional roles

External Affiliate Convenor of the South-South Forum, Dartmouth College
Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Exeter University
PI of the European Research Council-funded project South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (aka Southern Responses to Displacement)
Co-I (Joint-Lead of the Baddawi Camp Lab) of the AHRC funded Network Plus project, Imagining Futures through [Un]Archived Pasts
Co-Editor of the Migration and Society journal

Recently Completed Projects

PI of the AHRC-ESRC project 'Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria' (aka Refugee Hosts) (2016-2021, completed)
PI of the British Council-USA funded project, Religion and Social Justice for Refugees. (completed)

Further news

Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh awarded Cornell-UCL grant for work on migration and refuge

Teaching

I teach on the following modules:

Undergraduate

Migration and Transnationalism (GEOG0039)

Postgraduate

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Migration (GEOG0127)
Gender, Generation and Forced Migration (GEOG0129, Convenor)
Issues in Global Migration (GEOG0128)

Publications

To view Professor Fiddian-Qasmiyeh's publications, please visit UCL Profiles:

Publications

Research Interests

Drawing on a critical theoretical perspective my work contributes to key debates surrounding refugees’ and local host community members' experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement; critical approaches to knowledge production in refugee and migration studies; the nature of refugee-host-donor relations, and both North-South and South-South humanitarian responses to forced migration. My research - supported by major grants and research awards from the Leverhulme Trust, AHRC-ESRC and the European Research Council - examines experiences of and responses to displacement from Syria through multi-sited research in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. At UCL, I co-direct the Migration Research Unit and the Refuge in a Moving World interdisciplinary research network.

Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (Sep. 2016 - Sep. 2021)

Over 4,4 million refugees have sought safety across Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey from the ongoing Syrian conflict, with local communities, civil society groups, established refugee communities, and faith-based organisations providing essential assistance, solidarity and support to refugees. However, little is known regarding the motivations, nature and impacts of such responses to international refugee flows from conflict. This interdisciplinary and participatory research project is supported by a Large Grant (£800,000) awarded by the AHRC-ESRC and aims to improve our understanding of the challenges and opportunities that arise in local responses to displacement, both for refugees from Syria and for the members of the communities that are hosting them in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. This project is reframing debates about the roles and experiences of local communities and refugees in contexts of conflict-induced displacement in the global South. In so doing, the research aims to inform the development of policy, practice and service provision at local, national and international levels. The project team includes Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (PI), Co-Is Prof. Alastair Ager, Dr Anna Rowlands and Prof Lyndsey Stonebridge, Writer-in-Residence Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, and 9 local researchers in the Middle East. Follow the project on the Refugee Hosts website and through Twitter. Selected Open Access project publications include the following: 30+ chapter edited volume, Refuge in a Moving World: Refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines; the 2019 article, 'The Changing Faces of UNRWA: From the global to the local' (Journal of Humanitarian Affairs); and a co-authored report, Religion and Social Justice for Refugees: Insights from Cameroon, Greece, Malaysia, Mexico, Jordan and Lebanon. Watch a video of the Refugee Hosts project, which has been exhibited in the IWM 'Refugees' season.

South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria (July 2017 - Summer 2023)

With the support of a major European Research Council grant, between 2017 and 2023 I am leading a major multi-sited research project Analysing South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria, through fieldwork in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. This project examines how, why and with what effect Southern actors - states, civil society networks, and refugees themselves - have responded to displacement from Syria. Overall, the project aims to purposefully centralise refugees’ own experiences of and perspectives on these Southern-led initiatives. Indeed, by bringing refugees’ voices to the forefront, I aim to shed a unique light on refugees’ understandings of humanitarianism, and the extent to which they consider that diverse Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement can or should be conceptualised as ‘humanitarian’ programmes. In so doing, the project makes a particularly significant contribution to debates regarding the desirability and/or tensions of ‘alternative’ forms of humanitarianism which have, until now, been monopolised by Northern academic and policy perspectives. Follow us on Twitter and the Southern Responses website. Selected Open Access project publications to date include Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2020) 'Recentering the South in Studies of Migration,' Introduction to the Special Issue, Migration and Society, 3(1): 1-18; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. with J. Fiori (2020) 'Migration, Humanitarianism and the Politics of Knowledge,' Migration and Society, 3(1): 180-189; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. with F. Carella (2020) 'The Position of "the South" and "South-South migration" in Policy and Programmatic Responses to Different Forms of Migration,' Migration and Society 3(1): 203-212; and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2019) ‘Disasters Studies: Looking Forward,’ Disasters, 43 (S1): S36-S60.

This ongoing ERC-funded project builds upon long-standing research into this topic, which resulted in my second monograph, South-South Educational Migration and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East, (2015). Through multi-sited fieldwork with and about Sahrawi and Palestinian refugee students in Cuba and Libya, and following their return to the desert-based Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and the urban Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the book investigates the experiences of Sahrawi and Palestinian refugees during and after their time in Cuba and Libya both as a form of international migration, and as an example of South-South cooperation.

Completed Projects: Faith-Based Humanitarianism; Stateless Diasporas; and Gender, Islam and Displacement

Faith-Based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Displacement (2010-2016)

This research project examines how, why and to what effect faith-based actors – including international networks, major humanitarian organisations and local faith communities – provide assistance and protection to individuals and communities displaced by conflict. In 2011, a Special Issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies was published on “Faith Based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Migration” (24(3), Sep. 2011), and more recent research funded by the Henry Luce Foundation explored the intersections between gender and faith-based responses to forced migration, with a particular focus on the gendered nature and implications of local faith communities’ responses to displacement from Syria. Between 2014-2016, field research was conducted with refugees and local faith communities in Lebanon, and an international workshop was held in 2016 to provide a space for debate and mutual learning between academics, policy-makers, practitioners and displaced persons themselves.

(Re)Conceptualising Stateless Diasporas (2011 - 2015)

This Leverhulme-funded explored the experiences of members of two Middle Eastern stateless diasporas in four countries in the European Union: France, Italy, Sweden and the UK. In particular, it examined how Palestinians and Kurds negotiate, mobilise and/or resist notions of shared belonging in the EU, and analyses how Palestinians and Kurds who hold diverse socio-legal statuses conceptualise connections with other members of ‘their’ communities across time and space, and socio-political commitments to ‘their’ respective homelands and nationalist projects in the contemporary Middle East. Academic outputs included a Special Issue on “Refugee and Diaspora Memories,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(6) (Dec. 2013), and a series of articles including 'On the Threshold of Statelessness: Palestinian narratives of loss and erasure’ (Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2016) and 'Palestinians and the Arab Uprisings: Political activism, and narratives of home, homeland and home-camp' (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2016).

Gender, Islam and Displacement (2010 - 2014)

Drawing upon multi-sited research in the Sahrawi refugee camps (Algeria), Cuba, South Africa, Spain and Syria, this ESRC-funded research developed a postcolonial and intersectionalist analysis to investigate the roles of gender, ethnicity and Islam in performances of the Sahrawi refugee Self and Other ‘on’ and ‘off-stage’ during interactions with secular, Christian and Muslim audiences in the refugee camps and in the international arena. In particular, it examines how, why and to what effect young Sahrawi refugees in the diaspora ‘inherit’ and reproduce an ‘official discourse’ which represents, and consequently constitutes, the Sahrawi refugee camps as ‘ideal’ spaces inhabited by ‘ideal refugees’: secular, democratic and gender equal. My book, The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival was published by Syracuse University Press in January 2014.

Throughout my research into experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement, I regularly engage with different academic and non-academic audiences. For instance, I have been interviewed by the BBC News, Channel 4 News, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and the BBC Radio 3 New Thinkers programme; my research has been cited by The Guardian; and I regularly contribute to evaluations and assessments by humanitarian organisations and agencies such as Oxfam and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). My research has been exhibited in a number of museum spaces, including as part of the 2017 Venice Biennale, the UCL-Culture Moving Objects exhibition (2019), and the Imperial War Museum’s 2020-2021 Refugee Season.

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/DljjldvzhbQ

In 2018, I was awarded the Provost’s Established Career Academic Public Engagement Award for “catalysing the development of UCL-wide public engagement activities in relation to support for refugees and displaced people and the impact of [her] own research on humanitarian policy and practice.”

Faith-Based Humanitarianism

As part of this project, between 2011 and 2014, I collaborated with a 'Joint Learning Initiative' on Local Faith Communities and Resilience involving academics, policymakers, practitioners and representatives from a diversity of faith communities to explore the nature and impacts of initiatives developed by local faith communities in humanitarian situations. In addition to co-editing a major scoping report with Alastair Ager (Columbia University), I oversaw the development of a policy note and an open-access Forced Migration Online resource summary page on local faith communities and humanitarianism which were launched in 2013. In 2016, I was appointed Academic Co-Chair of a new Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities focusing on Refugees and Forced Migration. My recent publications on this matter include a piece in The Berkley Forum, an MRU Policy Brief on Gender, Religion and Humanitarian Responses to Refugees, a major research report on Religion and Social Justice for Refugees, and a coauthored 2022 chapter on “Religions and Forced Migration” in The State of the Evidence in Religions and Development, edited by Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities.

In 2014, the JLI scoping report was acknowledged in a new UNHCR Partnership Note on faith-based organisations as ‘important to the thinking behind all areas of the follow-up to the Dialogue on Faith and Protection.’ The Special Issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies which I edited in 2011 on ‘Faith-Based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Displacement’ and the policy note ‘Local faith communities and resilience in humanitarian situations’ were cited as key resources in UNHCR’s report and, previously, at UNHCR’s 2012 Dialogue.

In May 2014, I participated in an expert panel discussion at the Westminster Faith Debates on ‘Engaging Religion for Development.’

In July 2013, I was invited to contribute to The Immanent Frame – a forum established by the SSRC (Social Science Research Council)– alongside other leading figures working on the intersections between religion, secularism and the public sphere. My contribution addresses the polemics of state-led 'religious engagement' in contexts of displacement and humanitarian crises: 'Engaging Religion at the Department of State'.

The Working Paper on Local Faith Communities and the promotion of resilience in humanitarian situations, and a blog posting on the report by JLI researcher Joey Ager were referenced in The Guardian article ‘Faith-based organisations: should dogma be left out of development?’. I contributed to a debate on this subject on 23 May 2013, and some of my key insights were included in The Guardian’s debate roundup: 'Keep the Faith: 12 thoughts on dogma and development'.

In January 2013, I was awarded the Lisa Gilad Prize by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) for my 2011 article 'The pragmatics of performance: putting 'faith' in aid in the Sahrawi refugee camps.' Awarded at each biennial meeting of the IASFM, the prize is given for 'the most innovative and thoughtful contribution to the advancement of refugee studies’ published in one of the two immediately preceding volumes of the Journal of Refugee Studies.

Gender, Youth and Forced Migration

In 2011, I presented the findings of my research in and about the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. My Policy Briefing (Protracted Sahrawi Displacement: Challenges and opportunities beyond encampment) was launched at a policy roundtable at UNHCR-Geneva, leading to a number of changes in UN- and NGO-led projects and programmes for women and children in the Sahrawi refugee camps.

Research Students

Primary Supervisor

Tyler Valiquette: Queer Migration in the Periphery: Responses to Venezuelan sexual minority refugees in Colombia and Brazil (2022-present; primary supervisor with Richard Mole, UCL Geography)
Claire Fletcher: The roles of faith-based organisations in supporting asylum-seekers in the UK (2016 – present; 1+3 ESRC Funded; primary supervisor, initially with Claire Dwyer, with Tatiana Thieme since 2020, UCL Geography)

Second Supervisor

Andrew Knight: Community-based humanitarianism: exploring refugee-to-refugee humanitarian initiatives in the context of the Syria crisis (2017 - 2022, DPU 60th Anniversary Scholarship, secondary supervisor, with Andrea Rigon, UCL-DPU)
Shayan Moftizadeh: Exploring identities among the second-generation Kurdish diaspora in the UK (2016 - present; secondary supervisor, initially with Claire Dwyer, UCL Geography)
Ceri Butler: The Integration of Refugee Doctors in the UK (2015 – present; co-supervisor, with Fiona Stevenson, UCL Medical School)

Completed

Dr Diego Garcia Rodriguez: Exploring gender, sexuality and Islam: An ethnography of religious empowerment in Indonesia (2016 - 2020; secondary supervisor, with Richard Mole, CMII/SEESS)
Dr Khatereh Eghdamian: Rethinking Religion in Humanitarianism Beyond Identity Politics: Discursive representations of Syrian refugees and their effects on religious minorities in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey (2015 – 2019, ESRC-funded; primary supervisor, with Claire Dwyer, UCL Geography)
Dr Suriyah Bi: The Feminisation of Marriage: Ghar Dhamads, Generational Shifts, and Global vs. Local in Birmingham’s British-Pakistani Community (2015 – 2019, GoK-funded; primary supervisor, with Claire Dwyer, UCL Geography)
Dr Tom Brocket: Between West Bank and East Coast: Making Palestinian heritage in and from the United States (2016 - 2018, ESRC-funded; secondary supervisor, with Caroline Bressey, UCL Geography)
Dr Chloe Lewis: Rape as a Weapon of War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Uncovering the Elusive Male ‘Victim’(2011 – 2018, ESRC-funded; co-supervisor, with D. Chatty, University of Oxford)
Dr Kerrie Thornhill: Reconstructed Meanings of Sexual Violence in Post-Conflict Liberia (2011 - 2016, Trudeau Foundation Scholar; co-supervisor with P. Daley, University of Oxford; DPhil awarded with no changes)

Grants, Prizes and Awards

AHRC Network Plus Award (2020-2024)
AHRC Development Award (2019-2020)
European Research Council Grant (ref: ASSHURED 715582) (2017-2022)
Provost’s Established Career Academic Public Engagement Award (2018)
British Council-USA (2018-2020)
AHRC-ESRC Large Project (ref: AH/P005438/1) (2016-2021)
UNHCR (2018-2020)
Philip Leverhulme Prize awarded by the Leverhulme Trust (2015)
Lisa Gilad Prize awarded by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (2013)
The Henry Luce Foundation (2010-2011, 2014-2016 and 2018-2020)
Oxford University Press John Fell Fund (2012-2014)
Leverhulme Trust (2011-2015)
Joint Learning Initiative (2012-2014)
Oxford Department for International Development, University of Oxford (2011-2013)
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2012)
World Bank (2010-2011)
UK Department for International Development (DfID) (2010-2011)
Commonwealth Foundation (2010-2011)
Economic and Social Research Council (2005-2009)