Research
Research interests
- Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies and Theories
- Social Anthropology, Social Theory and Cultural Analysis
- Violence and Conflict
- Secrecy
- Sociality
- Subjectivity
- Anthropology of the State and the Law
- Transnational Adoption Circuits, Documents and Archives
- Ethnography
- Petén, Guatemala, London.
Research
My background is in social anthropology and gender studies. My work to date has focused on a profoundly theoretically inflected ethnographic approach to the study of relations and relational categories - notably 'gender', 'sexuality' and 'secrecy' - through research on socially, culturally and historically situated practices.
I recently completed a monograph on histories of violence and socialities of secrecy in Petén, northern Guatemala. Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala deals with the experiences of guerrilla combatants of the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) in the aftermath of the Peace Accords signed in December 1996 by the Guatemalan government and guerrilla insurgents. The book focuses on 'secrecy' as both sociality and knowledge practice, and demonstrates the relevance of thinking 'gender' in the coalescence of novel objects of analysis in a broad field of contemporary theory.
I am currently collaborating with Adi Kuntsman and Jin Haritaworn on two co-editing projects. The first, Queer Necropolitics, is a collection of essays that interrogates the changes in queer politics that emerge in violent regimes of coloniality, 'War on Terror', incarceration, border enforcement and neoliberalism. The second project, ‘Murderous Inclusions: Queer Politics, Citizenship and the “Wars without End”’, will lead to a special issue of the International Feminist Journal of Politics scheduled for print publication in December 2013.
With Suhraiya Jivraj (Kent) and Sarah Keenan (SOAS), I also coordinate the AHRC-funded Decolonizing Sexualities Research Network.
Having completed research on 'Fissured Legality and Affective States: Ethnographic Reflections on the "International Adoption" Circuits between Guatemala and the United Kingdom', funded by the Joint Initiative for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean (JISLAC) earlier in 2012, I am currently working on a new project, 'Governing Transnational Adoption in Postwar Guatemala: Ethnographic Reflections on Documents, Law and the State', with the support of the British Academy.
Awards
2012-2014, Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Networking Grant, "Transnational Network for Sexuality, Race and Religion Researchers and Civil Society Actors", Co-Investigator. Principal Investigator, Dr Suhraiya Jivraj, Kent Law School, University of Kent, £28,455.
2012-2014, British Academy Small Grant, "Governing Transnational Adoption in Postwar Guatemala: Ethnographic Reflections on Documents, Law and the State", £6,900.
2008, Joint Initiative for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean Research Grant, "Fissured Legality and Affective States: Ethnographic Reflections on the 'International Adoption' Circuits between Guatemala and the United Kingdom", £ 4,000.
2007, British Academy Small Research Grant, "Performativities: Contexts, Domains, Perspectives‟, £2,054, (with Sadie Wearing).
