About me
I’m a Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. My interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection between performativity, voice and the politics of recognition. I’m currently working on the proposal for my second academic book.
In 23/24 I’m researching solidarity in Europe in light of the ongoing situation in Ukraine funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant. My book Refugee Voices: Performativity and the Struggle for Recognition is published by Routledge in March 2024. I'm also a Visiting Fellow at the Deutsche Zentrum für Integrations und Migrationsforschung (DeZIM) in Berlin and Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, and working on AHRC-funded Impact work in the UK with partners including the Imperial War Museum and Migration Museum.
Alongside academic work, I have written for publications including the New York Times, Harvard Nieman Lab, openDemocracy, frieze, Art Review, Paris Review Daily, Prospect, Smithsonian, and the Guardian, and have worked as an investigative researcher for Channel 4 (UK). I have also worked as a strategic communications consultant and copywriter for INGOs including the World Wildlife Fund and Amnesty International.
Before working for Sussex, former staff journalism roles included arts correspondent and features writer at the Independent newspaper in London, and acting arts and media correspondent of the Observer newspaper (UK), for which I was nominated for a British Press Award. Prior to that I was an award-winning journalist for trade magazines. My first degree was in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where I edited the university’s student newspaper. I have a PhD from the Dept of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics where I was supervised by Prof Myria Georgiou and Prof Shani Orgad. I use ethnography, visual and critical discourse analysis.
Writing
Published on platforms including the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer (UK), Prospect, frieze, Paris Review Daily, Smithsonian, New Statesman, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, the Art Newspaper, Calvert Journal, Time Out London, the Village Voice, the Evening Standard, Esquire, Museums Journal, the White Review, Guernica, LA Review of Books, Modern Painters, Dazed and Confused, BOMB, the Millions, Wonderland, Icon and Night and Day (Vintage Books); also worked as an assistant producer for Channel 4 Dispatches.
Consultancy/strategy
Non-profits, arts and media organisations including Amnesty International, WWF, King’s College London, RADA, Tresor Berlin, Southbank Centre, Hearst Corporation