Growing up in Australia in an Indian and Malaysian-Chinese family, I have always been surrounded by diaspora communities, connecting to people and struggles occurring miles away and learning to navigate politics, identity and belonging beyond borders. I want to explore what it means to be a citizen in diasporic contexts by utilising my research to amplify the creative repertoires and acts of solidarity generated in diaspora networks. My research stands in solidarity with diaspora activists and provides space for their voices. It defends and amplifies the political utility of solidarity as a strategy for transnational political action. Building on my MPhil research at the University of Cambridge on solidarity protest movements in the Lebanese diaspora in France, my PhD will investigate citizenship beyond borders. Through creative research methods such as visual, video and music elicitation, this PhD will explore the affective, enacted, legal and resistive forms of citizenship produced by global solidarity networks in the diaspora. I aim to combine my passion for research and my experience with documentary film-making and audio-visual podcasts to produce public-facing, community grounded research output.
University of Cambridge Sociology 2021
Sciences PO, Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris Middle Eastern Studies 2020