Biography

I have a background in Environmental Sciences and Global Development Studies from the University of Virginia, USA, where I first began studying rural-urban migration, natural disasters, and environmental change in Mongolia. I returned there for my Master’s thesis research for an MA in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity from the University of Essex, UK, which I attended as a Fulbright Scholar. I worked in rural Morocco for two years as a US Peace Corps Volunteer.

For my PhD research, also based at the Research Platform Mobile Cultures and Societies, I will use a translocal framework to analyze how social remittances – the intangible transfers of knowledge, skills, or ideas between migrants and their families – affect the environment in a translocally embedded community that is both an origin and destination of migrants. The ethnographic research will take place in Morocco using a mixed methods approach, including interviews, household surveys, and participatory approaches, both with town residents in a rural area and with translocal connections in the surrounding region.

Research interests

Thematic: migration and climate change, entangled im/mobilities, human rights and environment

Regional: Middle East & North Africa (Morocco, Egypt), Central Asia (Mongolia, Tajikistan)