Research profile

Primary research areas

Ahlam Chemlali’s research focuses on migration and border management, gender and violence, sexual and gender-based violence, slow violence, life in transit, migrants’ everyday lives, and European migration politics. Chemlali’s geographic focus is on North Africa, specifically Libya and Tunisia and Europe's Southern borders.

Current research 

Ahlam Chemlali’s research examines the politics and practices of border violence in contemporary European migration politics. Chemlali explores how the externalization of European border control to North Africa produces the everyday violence of the border and how this shapes gendered experiences. Her research project offers a unique ethnographic perspective on how West African migrant women in transit navigate and negotiate the violent terrains that characterize the North African borderlands, with special attention to the Tunisian and Libyan borderlands. 

Projects

At DIIS - Danish Insitute for International Studies Ahlam is a part of the project ‘Women on the Move’ which is concerned with the gendered aspects of irregular migration to Europe. Specifically, the attention is on women migrants in transit, and waiting in transit camps, along the African-European migration route, in Nigeria, Niger, Libya and Italy. The project is funded by Open Society Foundation, New York. 

Find more information about the project here. 

At AAU Copenhagen Campus, Ahlam Chemlali will teach at GRS - Global Refugee Studies with special emphasis on borders, transit, violence, and gender.

The PhD is hosted at DIIS – Danish Institute for International Studies at the Migration and Global Order unit and funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research.

CONTACT:

Email: [email protected]