Anna is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of border studies, migration, urban studies and social policy. Her expertise lies in conducting qualitative critical research on borders, migration and human mobility, through an urban lens and a focus on the micro-level, the local, the neighbourhood, the community.
She is currently working on time, gender and the border, exploring the politics of time and time punctuation in relation to migration. In particular, she is interested in exploring how the border and the migratory journey disrupt people’s perception of time and the control that they have over it.
At the same time, she is working on the project ‘Decolonising the City’ (DtC), funded by the Urban Studies Foundation and the Independent Social Research Foundation. The key aim of the project is to generate a participatory arts-based methodological toolkit, co-designed with migrant communities, that will help explore how migrants practice urban citizenship. The project focuses on migrant communities of African descent in Athens (Greece) and follows the theoretical trajectories of de Sousa Santos’ “Epistemologies of the South”.
She has also been part of the University of Birmingham’s SEREDA project, focusing on: the geographies of shame experienced by forced migrant survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV); the impact of SGBV on survivors’ integration; the mobilisation of survivors to resist their double disenfranchisement; and finally the potential of feminist approaches to prevent and treat SGBV among forced migrants.
Her PhD work focused on the impact of the 2015 border crisis on the city of Athens, its institutions, public space and social movements. It explored the new spatialities and temporalities of the new normative requirements of EU’s encampment strategies and border policies.
Finally, during 2015-2016, she conducted extensive research in landing sites and camps on Lesbos and in Athens, investigating the new governance strategies and tools developed by the European Commission, their everyday implementation and impact on the spaces and lives of migrants and local communities.