Team

I work at the intersections of sociology, education and linguistic anthropology and now political science. My research focuses on the cultural and linguistic dimensions of governing minority populations, particularly colonial and postcolonial regimes of governmentality and the forms of resistance they generate. I received my Ph.D. in 2020 from the Language, Context, and Culture strand of the Urban Education Department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where my dissertation examined Kurdish language activism in Turkey as a site of colonial governance, political struggle, and everyday resistance. My doctoral research culminated in the book Beyond Language: Kurdish Language Activism in the Face of Colonial Language Governmentality.

I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher as part of Sovereign Performance project looking at the performative politics of sovereignty in western Kurdistan (Syria), also known as Rojava.

Formerly, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Multilingualism at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland (2021-2022). I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on multilingualism and sociology of education at different colleges of the City University of New York since 2016

My research focuses on citizens and civil society engagement at the intersection of local, national, and international governance, with a focus on the performative dimension of rights claims. During my PhD, I examined local citizenship performances in Morocco, before moving to the study of learning trajectories of opposition actors across political spaces. Currently, I work on the repertoires of the Catalan independence movement within the Sovereign Performance project at Ghent University.

Before joining Ghent University, I taught courses on politics and international relations at the American College of the Mediterranean (France). I obtained a PhD in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands) after graduating from the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree “Crossing the Mediterranean: Towards Investment and Integration” (MIM; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Université Paul Valéry Montpellier). My research has been published in different peer-reviewed journals, including Democratization and Mediterranean Politics, as well as various book chapters. I also worked as a consultant for local and international NGOs in Morocco.

Webpages:

• Orcid

My academic work focuses on democratic politics, citizenship, de facto sovereignty and public authority in societies riven by conflict and/or civil war. I trained as a Development Sociologist and as a Political Geographer and my work has traversed several disciplines since then, including Anthropology, International Relations, Conflict Studies and Area Studies.

Most of my initial work gravitated around Sri Lanka, but more recently I have done research on Northern Cyprus. I am currently deepening my knowledge about the other two project case contexts: Catalonia and Kurdistan.

Before joining Ghent University, I worked at the School of Global Studies of Gothenburg University (2020-2025), the School of Social and Political Sciences of Melbourne University (2014-2019) and the Geographical Institute of Zurich University (2008-2012). Prior to that, I conducted applied research at Clingendael Institute (The Hague, 2003-2005 ) and independently (Bart Klem Research, 2005-2012).

Webpages

• Personal webpage
• UGent
• Orcid
• Researchgate