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Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is a professor in Migration and Refugee Studies at the Department of Geography, University College London (UCL). She is a social researcher and a reader in human geography.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is also a 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 (@RefugeMvingWrld).

Moreover, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is an External Affiliate Convener of the South-South Forum at Dartmouth College, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Education and fieldwork

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh completed her undergraduate studies (BA) and her first MA in social and political sciences at King’s College, University of Cambridge, followed by MSc in gender and development at London School of Economics, University of London, as well as MA in international relations at University of New South Wales. She then obtained her PhD in international development from University of Oxford.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’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. She has therefore conducted extensive research in refugee camps and urban areas including in Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Sweden, and the UK.

She currently jointly leads the Baddawi Camp Lab.

Selected ongoing projects:

She currently leads two projects on refugees. One – Refugee Hosts – is with three co-investigators Alastair Ager, Anna Rowlands and Lyndsey Stonebridge. It is a UK-based inter-disciplinary project funded by the UK Arts and is a Humanities Research funding project in collaboration with the Economic and Social Research Council. The field sites are neighborhoods in Jordan and Lebanon that are “hosting” people who have been displaced from Syria, not only Syrians, but also Palestinians, Iraqis and Kurds, who have long lived in Syria. Through this project Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and her partners explore how people from Syria view and conceptualize the differences in how assistance is provided or not provided by different actors around the world[1].

Family and personal life:

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh was born in Tenerife in the Canary Islands. After having completed her undergraduate studies in Cambridge, she did not intend to go back to academia. However, her whole career took a different path after she encountered a pediatrician from a maternal and infant health care unit in Sahrawi. Using the advantage of being multi-lingual, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh served as a French-Spanish medical translator in south-west Algeria for the team of doctors. It was there that she met and worked with Sahrawi women who were educated in Cuba and had been leading medical responses within the camps. From there started her fieldwork and her career of a social researcher.

Fiddian-Qasmieh is married to a Palestinian Yusif M. Qasmiyeh - a writer in residence, born in Baddawi refugee camp in Lebanon. They have a seven-year-old daughter named Bisou[2].

Publications:

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is a sole-author of two books on refugees and migration, namely: South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from Cuba, North Africa and the Middle East and The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s 2015 text, South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from Cuba, North Africa and the Middle East talks about the phenomenon of South-South educational migration for refugees. It focuses particularly on South-South scholarship programmes in Cuba and Libya, which have granted free education to children, adolescents and young adults from two of the world’s most protracted refugee situations: Sahrawis in Algeria and Palestinians in Lebanon. This work sheds light on the refugees’ understandings of self-sufficiency, humanitarianism and hospitality, as well as discusses the impact of the Arab spring on Libya’s support mechanisms for Sahrawi and Palestinian refugees.

Her second book, The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival (2014) talks about Sahrawi refugees in Algeria, Cuba, Spain, South Africa, and Syria, exploring how, why, and to what effect the idealized perceptions of the camps as uniquely secular, democratic spaces, and gender equal, have been projected onto the international arena. In this book Fiddian-Qasmiyeh argues that secularism and the empowerment of Sahrawi refugee women have been strategically invoked to secure the humanitarian and political support of Western state and non-state actors, ensuring the continued survival of the camps and their inhabitants.

In addition to the above, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is an editor of multiple books and journal special issues. Among the most recent ones are:

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (ed) (2020) Refuge in a Moving World: Refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines, London: UCL Press.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Berg, M. & Waters, J. (eds) (2020) Special Issue on 'Recentering the South in Studies of Migration,' Migration and Society, issue 3.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. & Daley, P. (eds) (2018, pb 2020) Handbook of South-South Relations, Oxford: Routledge.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K. and Sigona, N. (eds) (2014 and 2016) The Oxford Handbook of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Paperback published in 2016*

Saunders, J., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Snyder, S. (eds) (2016) Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lacroix, T. and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (eds) (2013) Special Issue on “Refugee and Diaspora Memories,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(6), Dec. 2013.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (ed) (2011) Special Issue on “Faith Based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Migration,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 24(3), Sep. 2011.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh also recently contributed to a Policy Brief on Gender, Religion and Humanitarian Responses to Refugees.

Awards:

Provost’s Established Career Academic Public Engagement Award for “catalyzing 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.” (2018)

Major European Research Council award for her 5-year project, South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. (2016)

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. (2015)

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') (2012)

References:

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh - Routledge & CRC Press Author Profile

https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/elena-fiddian-qasmiyeh

https://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/people/academic-staff/elena-fiddian-qasmiyeh

https://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Refugees-Sahrawi-Politics-Survival/dp/0815633262

https://ucl.academia.edu/ElenaFiddianQasmiyeh

https://cityscapesmagazine.com/index.php?p=articles/a-politics-of-connection [1] https://cityscapesmagazine.com/index.php?p=articles/a-politics-of-connection

[2] https://cityscapesmagazine.com/index.php?p=articles/a-politics-of-connection