Melanie is a DPhil candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Her research explores how asylum seekers living in Oxford and detained at Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre negotiate discourses of identification and criminalisation, and manage the uncertain - and sometimes irrational – liminality of the asylum system. She examines the tension between understanding asylum seekers as passive victims or opportunistic cheats to examine questions of truth and lies.
Melanie has a degree in Anthropology and Archaeology from Oxford University, a masters in the Anthropology of Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies and has worked as a consultant for the Department of International Development.
Publications
Migration, Time and Temporalities: Review and Prospect, COMPAS Research Resource paper, with Ali Rogers, Bridget Anderson (2012). Bibliography, Methodology and Workshop Report
‘Vile liars and truth distorters: Truth, trust and the asylum system', Anthropology Today 28(4), pp.8-12 (2012)
‘Anonymous Aliens?: Questions of Identification in the Detention and Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers’, Population, Space and Place 18(6): 715-727 (2012)
‘Establishing Your True Identity: The Negotiation of Discourses of Identification by Detained Asylum Seekers in Oxfordshire' in People, Papers, Practices eds I. About, J. Brown, and G. Lonergan (Palgrave Macmillan) (forthcoming 2012)
'21st Century Bogeymen: Producing and Contesting Categories of Criminal Aliens', in Strangers, Aliens & Foreigners (Inter-Disciplinary.net e-Book, forthcoming).
‘Shareholders, Bureaucrats and the "Queen of Campsfield": An Overview of Administrative Relations at a British Immigration Removal Centre’ (2011), LARES v.LXXVII(1), pp.65-94 (Italian journal).