CAIS is fortunate to have two visiting fellow during this semester.

Dr Karima Laachir will be a visiting fellow at CAIS until mid-2012. She is on leave from her position at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London where she is a Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies.  Her research is based on comparative postcolonial literature; Arabic popular culture; literature of the North African diaspora (Beur); exclusion, segregation and marginalisation of ethnic minorities in Europe, postcolonialism and colonial legacies, Arab Diaspora, Islam and Islamophobia.

Dr Madeleine Reeves is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Manchester, where she is a RCUK Research Fellow in the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change.  Dr Reeves will be a visiting fellow at CAIS during February-March 2012. Her interests lie in the anthropology of state and of politics, with a particular interest in everyday experiences of socio-spatial transformation in contexts of rapid change.  At ANU she is completing a book manuscript based on her doctoral research, a study of governance and everyday life in a region of new international borderland, where Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan meet.  She is also working through materials from her post-doctoral project, which explored the social and documentary strategies of Kyrgyz migrant workers in Moscow in remaining “visibly legal”.   You can find out more about her research here