My research is situated within the fields of gender and sexuality studies, critical border studies, affect studies, and the anthropology of the state. In my anthropological dissertation (awarded Cum Laude), I examine the bureaucratic infrastructures of the Dutch asylum procedure, focusing in particular on a detention center near Schiphol airport. Over several years, I followed application processes, with a specific interest in the work of the procedure’s professionals—whom I term state personae—including the IND, asylum lawyers, and the refugee council. My work demonstrates how state power mobilizes these professionals’ bodies to transform the bodies of asylum applicants into official documents, grounding ‘objective’ decisions on suffering, ‘deservingness,’ and inclusion or exclusion. I analyze how a shape-shifting dynamic of suspicious compassion shapes both the face-to-face encounters and decision-making practices of this legal procedure.

Currently, my research focuses on the politics of (in)hospitality toward queer refugees in Nordic European countries. I am particularly interested in how queer tourists and (illegalized) queer refugees are ‘un/welcomed’ in cities mythologized as ‘gay paradises,’ such as Reykjavik and Amsterdam.

Research methods

• Ethnography
• In-depth interviewing
• Discourse analysis

BA

• Introduction to Gender & Sexuality studies
• Stop right there: the body, borders and state power
• BA supervision interdisciplinary social sciences (ISW)

PhD supervision

• Yentl de Lange’s project: Facing the Border. The Itineraries of Tunisian Visa Applicants for the Schengen Area