Writer and assistant professor in anthropology and international development at the University of Sussex
Bio
Melissa researches and writes about humanitarian aid, forced migration, technology, and the future in refugee camps and sanctuary cities.
Her award-winning book Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp brings readers into a high-security Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. Exposing how camp bureaucracy governs the lives and futures of both refugees and local aid workers, the book offers powerful testimony against camps as a humanitarian solution to displacement.
Melissa is currently working on her second book, which traces the increasing surveillance of migrants in her home city of Chicago. The ethnography investigates how people, technology, and data move within and across borders in one of the largest sanctuary cities in the world.
She is published in academic journals as well as public outlets including The New Humanitarian, The Conversation, and South Side Weekly.
Melissa holds a PhD and MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a BA from the University of Chicago.