IDCE Faculty

Anita Häusermann Fábos, Ph.D.

Education

• Ph.D. in Anthropology, Boston University, 1999
  M.A. in Arab Studies, Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1988
  B.A. in Political Science and Music (magna cum laude), University of Pennsylvania, 1985

Research Interests

Refugees and forced migrants, especially refugees in urban areas in the Middle East and Africa; population displacement and mobility; gender, diaspora, and citizenship; anthropology of ethnicity and race; transnational Islam; Arab League states’ immigration and naturalisation policies; music and migration; Muslim Arab Sudanese diaspora.

Biography

Anita Fábos is an anthropologist who has conducted research and outreach among refugees and other forced migrants in urban settings in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Her scholarship and practice pursues a number of interconnected themes in the area of forced migration and refugee studies: how people make and transform ethnic and racial boundaries and boundary markers, people’s experiences of displacement and challenges to gender norms, historical shifts in citizenship and nationality laws, methods and ethics of research with hidden, vulnerable and mobile populations, transcultural social networks, and refugee narratives and representations. Starting with a lengthy period of action research, NGO activism and outreach in Cairo, Fábos’ research and writing has followed the movements of Muslim Arab Sudanese—her main research participants--from their place of first exile in Egypt, to asylum in Europe and North America, and towards the formation of a diaspora straddling Islamic ‘space’ (countries in which Islam is the religion of the state) and the ‘asylum space’ of countries of resettlement in Europe and North America.

As the Director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies program at the American University in Cairo, and later Programme Coordinator for the graduate program in Refugee Studies at the University of East London, Fábos has been involved in developing integrated teaching, research, and outreach programs that have incorporated refugee and forced migrant perspectives into collaborative work with scholars, practitioners, refugee organizations, policy makers, and international organizations. At Clark University, students in her classes have carried out community-based projects that have investigated refugee participation in community development initiatives, refugee access to higher education, and refugee livelihoods in Worcester.

Fábos is currently conducting ethnographic research on the transnational strategies of women and men in the Muslim Arab Sudanese diaspora to promote ‘family values’ and negotiate a Sudanese diasporic identity, particularly in the context of global Islam. Other projects include an edited collection on the relevance of a ‘spiritual geography’ of Islam on forced migration within the Muslim world in a time of intensifying discourse of ‘security’; a special issue of Home Cultures that interrogates ‘home-making’ in protracted refugee situations; and an exploration of wedding singers and the performance of Sudanese music in the Muslim Arab Sudanese diaspora.

Selected Publications

2012    Fábos, Anita H. Resisting ‘Blackness’, Embracing Rightness: How Muslim Arab Sudanese Women Negotiate Cultural Space in the Diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (2): 218 – 237. February 2012.

2010    Fábos, Anita H. “Brothers” or Others? Propriety and Gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt (Paperback, revised and expanded edition). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. 200 pages.  ISBN: 184545989X.

2008    Fábos, Anita H. Evaluation of UK Home Office Sudan ‘Country of Origin’ Report. United Kingdom Home Office and Advisory Panel on Country Information (APCI), UK,  Jan – April 2008.

2008    ‘Resisting “Blackness”: Muslim Arab Sudanese in the Diaspora’. ISIM Review, Number 20, Winter 2008.

2007    Between Citizenship and Belonging: Transnational Ethnic Strategies of Arab Muslim Sudanese in the Diaspora. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning/Women, Gender & Research, Special Issue on Gender and Transnationalism in the Middle East. Nr. 3, 2007.

2007    Refugees in Urban Settings of the Global South (Co-edited with Gaim Kibreab) Special Issue of Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees. 24(1).

2007    Editorial Introduction (with Gaim Kibreab) in Fábos, A. and Kibreab, G. (Eds) Refugees in Urban Settings of the Global South. Special Issue of Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees. 24(1): 1-19.

2005    Fábos, Anita H. (with Nadje Al-Ali and Oroub El-Abed). Regional Paper III: Middle East and North Africa. In Developing DFID’s Policy Approach to Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Internally Displaced People, Volume II: Commissioned Papers. A Research Consultancy by the Refugee Studies Centre for the Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department, Department For International Development (DFID), United Kingdom. February 2005.

Courses

Community Development and Planning
Displacement and Development in the Contemporary World.
Transnationalism and Social Networks
Development Program and Project Management/Seminar

Environmental Science and Policy
Displacement and Development in the Contemporary World.
Transnationalism and Social Networks
Development Program and Project Management/Seminar

Geographic Information Sciences for Development and Environment
Displacement and Development in the Contemporary World.
Transnationalism and Social Networks
Development Program and Project Management/Seminar

Global Environmental Studies
Local Action/Global Change: The Urban Context

International Development and Social Change
Displacement and Development in the Contemporary World.
Transnationalism and Social Networks
Development Program and Project Management/Seminar

Peace Studies
ID 131 Local Action/Global Change: The Urban Context

Related Links

• International Development and Social Change