PHD RESEARCH
I was recently awarded the prestigious Graduate School of Social and Political Science (SSPS) Scholarship in 2022, to commence my PhD program at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. My PhD project is interested in understanding the idea of the impermanence to marginality or precarity, and lack thereof, and how the possibility of refugees’ refusal to stick to the expectations of subordination and exclusion that guide and guard the privileges of the hosts domination, results to a power struggle. Multiple accounts show struggles for power, recognition and resources pitch the displaced against the host community. How do ‘residual’ refugees navigate and possibly thrive against the otherwise established privileges of their hosts, thereby defying convention? Vast majority of refugees whose status have been terminated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees still find themselves in a situation of protracted exile. Even though termination of refugee status exposes residuals to vulnerability, not much of the extant literature explores life...
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PAST RESEARCH
My Master’s thesis, Narratives of the Journey to Exile and Transformative Agency of Residual Liberian Refugees in Oru, Southwestern Nigeria, examined post-refugee experiences outside closed camps. This thesis beat a strong shortlist of 10 others from universities in Europe, Asia, and other African countries to win the Global MSc Thesis Award organised by Routledge and the Border Criminologies network based at the University of Oxford.The vast majority of refugees whose status has been terminated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) still find themselves in a protracted exilic situation in Africa. This study focuses on the Liberians who were displaced due to the Liberian Civil War of 1989 to 2003. The Oru Refugee Camp in Ogun State, Nigeria, was one of many camps created in the region by UNHCR, to offer temporary accommodation for Liberian refugees until normalcy returned to their homeland. After the war ended in 2003, UNHCR failed to decongest the camps in West Africa despite introducing three durable solutions to...
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