Anita H. Fábos, Ph.D.

Professor of International Development and Social Change
Department of International Development, Community, and Environment
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610-1477

Phone: (508) 421-3826
Email: afabos@clarku.edu

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; music and diaspora; home and home-making for people in long-term exile; social integration and belonging.

Biography

Anita Fábos is an anthropologist who has worked and conducted research together with Muslim Arab Sudanese refugees in the Middle East, Europe, and North America.

Formerly 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 integrated teaching, research, and participatory 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, refugee livelihoods in Worcester, and experiences of belonging and home for people from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds.

Fábos and her writing partner Cathrine Brun (Professor and Director, CENDEP, Oxford Brookes  University) are working on a book on home and home-making for people in circumstances of long-term displacement, entitled Constellations of Home. She is also co-principle investigator (with Ed Carr) of the Worcester, MA site for Project MISTY, a six-city initiative with funding through the Belmont Forum that explores the ways that migration interacts with sustainability concerns in destination cities, with an emphasis on the unrecognized benefits that it can bring.

Selected Publications

2019   Brun, Cathrine and Fábos, Anita H. Homekeeping in long term displacement. Entry for The Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies (Peter Hopkins, Ed. Routledge). In Press.

2018   Kahn, Leora and Fábos, Anita H. Witnessing and Disrupting: The Ethics of Working with Testimony for Refugee Advocacy. Policy and Practice Note. Journal of Human Rights Practice. 9(3): 526–533. ISSN 1757-9619.

2017   Brun, Cathrine, Fábos, Anita H. and El-Abed, Oroub. Abject Citizenship: When categories of displacement collide with categories of citizenship. Norwegian Journal of Geography 71: 220-232. Special issue on “Political Geographies of Citizenship”, eds. Kristian Stokke and Marta Bivand Erdal. ISSN 0029-1951.

2017   Brun, Cathrine. and Fábos, Anita H. 2017. Mobilizing Home for Long-Term Displacement: A Critical Reflection on the Durable Solutions. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 9(2), pp.177-183. ISSN 1757-9619.

2017   Fábos, Anita H. New ‘Bad Girls’ of Sudan: Women singers in the Sudanese diaspora. In Rula Quawas and Nadia Yaqub (eds). Bad Girls of the Arab World. University of Texas Press. PP. 185 – 198. ISBN 1477313362.

2015   Brun, Cathrine and Fábos, Anita. Making Homes in Limbo? A conceptual framework. In Brun, Cathrine and Fábos, Anita (Eds) Special Issue: “Home-making in Limbo: Domestic Practices and the Meaning of Home for Forced Migrants in Protracted Situations.” Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees. 30(3): 5-17. March 2015. ISSN 1920-7336.

2015   Fábos, Anita. Microbuses and Mobile Home-making in Exile: Sudanese Visiting Strategies In Cairo. In Brun, Cathrine and Fábos, Anita (Eds) Special Issue: “Home-making in Limbo: Domestic Practices and the Meaning of Home for Forced Migrants in Protracted Situations.” Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees. 30(3): 55-66. March 2015. ISSN 1920-7336.

2014   Fábos, Anita H. and Isotalo, Riina, Eds. Managing Muslim Mobilities: Between Spiritual Geography and the Global Security Regime. Volume 1, Series in Religion and Global Migrations. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 214 pages. ISBN 978-1-13743-486-9.

2014   Fábos, Anita H. and Haddad, Emily. Towards a Feminist Analysis of ‘Impact’: Sondra Hale’s scholarship and activism in and beyond the university (with Emily Haddad). Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. 10(1): 53-81. Winter 2014. ISSN 1558-9579.

2012   Fábos, Anita. Resisting ‘Blackness’, Embracing Rightness: How Muslim Arab Sudanese Women Negotiate Cultural Space in the Diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 35(2): pp. 218 – 237. February 2012. ISSN 1466-4356.

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.mISBN 978-1-84545-989-5.