Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Reader in Human Geography at University College London, where she is also Co-Director of UCL's Migration Research Unit, and is the coordinator of the Refuge in a Moving World research network across UCL (@RefugeMvingWrld).

Elena’s research focuses on the intersections between gender, generation and religion in experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement, with a particular 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, Lebanon, South Africa, Syria, Sweden, and the UK. Elena is the Principal Investigator of a new major AHRC-ESRC funded project, 'Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria', awarded through the Global Challenges Research Fund (see www.refugeehosts.org and @RefugeeHosts). In 2016 she was also awarded a major European Research Council award for her 5-year project, South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, which will run from 2017-2022.

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) and The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, (co-editor, Oxford University Press, 2014).

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').