Citizenship, migration, and belonging in the Horn of Africa
I study how citizens engage with states, and experience, contest, and create the content of citizenship in meaningful ways. My work is grounded in long-term fieldwork across Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and beyond.
Citizenship & national identity
Battles over the right to have rights, and how they are exercised everyday, are pivotal across the world. My first book, Making Citizens in Africa (Cambridge, 2013), reveals the everyday activities of being a citizen by tracing ethnicity, gender, and national identity in Ethiopia. I call it ‘meaningful citizenship,’ going beyond the formality of documents that states provide or deny.
Migration & escape
I study human movement in East Africa, from informal and irregular migrants leaving Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, transiting through Djibouti, to refugees and IDPs who meet en route. My forthcoming book with Lauren Carruth asks what migration means when asylum and protection fail.
Education and the creation of citizens
I have ongoing research on civic education in Kenya, focused on teachers as active agents of citizen-creation. Closer to home, I work to widen who gets to do research, mentoring students and building pathways into advanced study and evidence-based impact in political science.