Maggie Neil

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International Development (2020 cohort)

My work currently explores bordering and reception practices at Europe’s Mediterranean edge. I examine the interrelatedness of local praxis and political narratives (around hospitality, tolerance, conviviality, diversity, welcome, etc.) with national and supra-national structures of power, social abandonment and marginalization, ideas of peripherality and modernity, and processes of re-making social and cultural identities. I am interested in how inclusion and exclusion are inscribed affectively, politically, existentially, and in the imaginaries of people involved on the ground (‘locals’ and ‘newcomers’ alike). My geo-political vantage point is southern Italy, with a particular emphasis on Sicily and the Central Mediterranean.

Previously, I received a BA in Humanities from Yale University and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. In between my studies, I was awarded a Fulbright to conduct research on migration in Sicily. I also worked as a researcher and project manager for the United Nations Development Programme, and as a Teaching Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in China.