POSTPONED: Postgraduate Masterclass With Dr Sofia El Arabi: Methods and ethics of fieldwork with migrant communities

The Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World is delighted to be welcoming Dr Sofia El Arabi to Edinburgh to discuss her important work on migration from Sub-Saharan Africa to Morocco and France.

As part of her visit, Dr El Arabi will be offering a special masterclass for postgraduate students at the University of Edinburgh exploring the theory, methods and ethics of ethnographic work with migrant communities. The masterclass is open to any PG student with interests in the topic, whether at PhD or MSc level. Refreshments will be available from 1pm with the masterclass itself starting at 1:30pm.

If you have any questions at all about the masterclass, please contact Alwaleed Centre General Manager, Tom Lea: tom.lea@ed.ac.uk

About Dr El Arabi

Holding a PhD in Political, Cultural and Historical Geography from the Sorbonne, Paris, Dr El Arabi has taught at bachelor and master levels at the University of Paris Cité, Sorbonne University, Sciences Po and Emlyon Business. She is currently a researcher in residency at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aix-Marseille University, Iméra, and and an Associate Fellow at the Alwaleed Centre, University of the University of Edinburgh. She is currently conducting a postdoctoral research project on "Muslim solidarity and infra-political resistance in the context of the migration crises in Marseille and Oujda", as part of Iméra's Mediterranean program. You can learn more about the project HERE.

Dr El Arabi's work lies at the intersection between studies on the effects of European externalization of border controls in Morocco and the study of solidarity dynamics and the political subjectivation processes that emanate from it. In the field, she founded the Association of Solidarity for the Support of Migrants (ASAM), which enabled her to better interrogate and grasp the migratory phenomenon from a scientific point of view, while being immersed among subaltern groups and working with territorial intermediary bodies (humanitarian organizations, citizen collectives, local authorities, social centers).

Nourishing her approach to migration governance with an examination of urban resilience and migration as a resource for city diplomacy, Dr El Arabi joined the Center of Excellence, the City Diplomacy Lab (CDL) at Columbia Global Centers-Paris. As an associate researcher, she also joined the Political Anthropology Laboratory (LAP), a joint unit of the CNRS and the EHESS. Her affiliation with these research structures enables her to work within a network and in a transdisciplinary context, extending her investigations in Morocco and adding scientific value to her research on the issue of migrant reception policies, social mobilization and the production of new forms of civility and citizenship in the Mediterranean.