Professor Parvati Nair, B.A., M.A., Ph.D (University of London), Member of the Academia Europea, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

Profile

I write as a migrant subject on questions of human mobility, forced or otherwise.

My research interests lie on the nexus of Cultural Studies and Migration Studies, with a special focus on visual representations of migration and displacement. My background is in Spanish Cultural Studies, starting with my doctoral work on the concept and practices of community in Spain. Subsequently, my writing has taken a more comparative and transnational focus, considering questions of human mobility and culture in contexts of globalization and transnational connections. My work is transdisciplinary and I employ methodologies that combine critical theory with ethnography. My preferred medium as an entry point to reflecting on the complexities and challenges of migration is photography as viewed against existing policies and practices that affect displaced and refugee populations. I have published extensively on photography as a mode of engaging with many socio-political issues relating to migration, such ethnicity, gender, urban spaces, borders, inequalities, environmental displacement, cultural memory and community. I have also published on film and music, especially flamenco. My work is committed to an ethics of social justice, dignity, and human and planetary rights through revisions in existing policies, discourses and practices.

I joined Queen Mary University of London in 2000, after some years of teaching in other universities. Since then, I have engaged in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Modern Languages and Cultures, Film and Comparative Literature. I have also successfully supervised and co-supervised over a dozen doctoral dissertations.

In 2012, I took a secondment from Queen Mary, University of London to work as Founding Director of the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility in Barcelona, Spain. There, I led work that focused on migration and media, statelessness and transnational connections, international women migrants, cities and migration, and migration-related crises. Our aim was to direct research findings to inform policymaking on international migration. Between 2014 and 2018, I represented the United Nations University (UNU) at the Global Migration Group (GMG), a forum of twenty-two agencies of the United Nations working on migration. In 2017, I acted as Working Chair of the GMG and represented UNU at the United Nations General Assembly in New York as the United Nations system worked towards the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration adopted by 163 Member States in 2018. In 2019, I took on the role of Special Adviser on Migration at UNU, based at the United Nations campus in Bonn, Germany.

From Autumn 2019 to Summer 2022, I was Head of the School of Languages Linguistics, and Film. I am currently the Director for Graduate Studies.

 

Personal website: www.parvatinair.com

Other websites:

http://www.women.qmul.ac.uk/virtual/women/atoz/nair.htm

https://mobilityconvention.columbia.edu/parvati-nair

 

Research

Research Interests:

My book Displacement, Environments and Photo-politics in the Mediterranean: Migrant Sea (Routledge, October 2024) focuses on the Mediterranean region from 2015 onwards to explore photography’s engagement with displacement, a process that denotes the environmental and social breakdown of places and the forced mobility of people.

Through a range of images by both established and amateur photographers, as well as ethnographic notes that draw from interviews with actors who are either displaced or working with the displaced, I quesiton the extent to which photography opens a space of possibility for the displaced in the face of globally dominant ideological drives that lead to the Anthropocene. Chapters focus on key aspects of this mass phenomenon, such as the question of crises no longer as exception but as historical process, the lived experiences of protracted relegation to borders and exposure to possible death, the prevalence of domicide and the spread of encampments, and the question of hope for the future.

 

I am the Principal Editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture. I founded Crossings in 2010, to offer a space for debates on the nexus of migration and culture. The journal promotes diverse global and local perspectives by fostering cutting-edge research in this area, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary methodologies. If interested in submitting an article, please visit: https://www.intellectbooks.com/crossings-journal-of-migration-culture

Publications

Books (single-authored)

 

Displacement, Environments, and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean: Migrant Sea. October 2024. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

 

A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastião Salgado.2011. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

 

Rumbo al norte: inmigración y movimientos culturales entre el Magreb y España, 2006, Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra.

 

Configuring Community: Theories, Narratives and Practices of Community Identities in Contemporary Spain, 2004, London: Modern Humanities Research Association

 

 

Books (co-edited):

Migration Across Boundaries: Linking Research to Practice and Experience., co-edited with Tendayi Bloom. 2015. London: Ashgate Publishers

 

Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Critical Discourses and Cinematic Practices, co-edited with Julian Gutiérrez-Albilla, 2013, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

 

Gender and Spanish Cinema, co-edited with Steven Marsh, 2004, Oxford: Berg Publishers

 

 

Chapters in edited books:

‘The Aesthetics of Ephemera: Migrant Subjects and the Undoing of Place in the Photography of Óscar Parasiego,’ in The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imaginings, co-edited by Luisa Elena Delgado and Eduardo Ledesma, forthcoming in 2025, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

 

‘At Sea: Hope as Survival and Sustenance for Refugees,’ in Emma Cox, Sam Durrant, David Farrier, Lindsey Stonebridge, Agnes Woolley (eds), Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities. 2019. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

 

‘The Razor’s Edge: Image and Corporeality at Europe’s Borders’, in Tanya Sheehan (ed.). 2018, Photography and Migration, London: Routledge, pp. 83-99

 

‘Still Photography and Moving Subjects: Migration in the Frame of Hospitality,’ in Nair, Parvati and Bloom, Tendayi (eds)., Migration Across Boundaries (2015), Ashgate

 

‘Undocumented, Unseen: the making of the everyday in the global metropolis of London,’ in Kershen, Anne (ed), 2015. London: the Promised Land? London: Ashgate

 

‘Turbulent Roads: Imperialism, globalization and migration’, in Ness, Immanuel and Saer, Ba (eds), 2015, The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Imperialism and Anti- Imperialism. London: Palgrave

 

‘Cultural and Religious Plurality in Europe: the challenges of pluralism’, in IEMED Yearbook. 2014. Barcelona: Iemed Publications, p.328-330

 

‘Reconfiguring the Rural: Fettered Geographies, Unsettled Histories and the Abyss of Alienation in Recent Socially Engaged Cinema from Spain,’ in Julian Gutierrez-Albilla and Parvati Nair (eds)., Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Critical Discourses and Cinematic Practices, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013

 

'Travelling Song: Music, Iteration and Translation in La leyenda del tiempo (The Legend of Time, Isaki Lacuesta, 2006)', in Rob Stone and Lisa Shaw (eds.), Screening Songs 2012, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

 

‘Postcolonial Theories of Migration: Historicizing Displacement, Dissonance and Difference,’ in Immanuel Ness (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Global Human Migration. 2012, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

 

'After-Images: Trauma, History and Connection in the Photography of Alfredo Jaar,' chapter in The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, Pamela Prado (ed.), 2010, , Santiago de Chile: Dirac Publishers, 63-78

 

'Trazar frontera: inmigración y movimientos culturales en España,' chapter in Irene Blásquez and Ángel Chueca (editors), Migraciones internacionales en el Mediterráneo y UE: un reto, Barcelona: Bellaterra. 2009, p.11-21

 

'Europe's "Last" Wall: Contiguity, Exchange and Heterotopia in Ceuta, the Confluence of Europe and North Africa" in Border Interrogations edited by Simon Doubleday and Benita Sampedro, Oxford, Berghahn Publishers, 2008, 15-41

 

 ‘Voicing Risk: Displacement and Relocation in Spanish-Moroccan Raï' in Between the Local and the Global: Popular Music and National Identity edited by Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights, London: Ashgate, 2007, 65-80

 

'Fotografía en torno al Estrecho,' in Dos siglos de imágenes de Andalucía edited by Alberto Egea, Sevilla, Centro de Estudios Andaluces, 2006

 

'Border-Line Men: Gender, Place and Power in Representations of Moroccans in Recent Spanish Cinema' in Gender and Spanish Cinema edited by Parvati Nair and Steven Marsh, Oxford, Berg Publishers, 2004, 103-118

 

'Vocal In-roads: Flamenco, Orality and Postmodernity in Las 3000 Viviendas: Viejo Patio (EMI, 1999)' in Music, Culture, Identity, edited by Richard Young Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2002

 

'Elusive song: flamenco as field and negotiation among the gitanos in Córdoba prison', in Constructing Identity in Twentieth Century Spain: Theoretical debates and Narrative Practices, ed. Jo Labanyi, Oxford University Press, 2002

 

'Homing the Other: the Immigrant as New European in David Planell's Bazar in Beyond Boundaries, ed. Andy Hollis, Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, December 2000

 

'Displacing the hero: masculine ambivalence in the cinema of Luis García Berlanga' in Entertaining Ideologies: 100 Years of European Cinema, ed. D. Holmes, Manchester: Manchester University Press, June 2000

 

 

Articles in refereed journals

‘With Strings Attached: material goods, transnational migrants, and border dynamics amongst the manteros of contemporary Spain,’ Romanic Review, 2023, 114 (2), p.420-435.

 

‘Beyond Mapped Horizons: Reflections on the Model International Mobility Convention,’ Columbia Journal of International Law, No. 2, Vol. 6, 2018, p. 248-256

 

‘The Refuge of Photography: Perspectives on Asylum, Citizenship and Belonging in London’ in Moving Worlds, special issue edited by David Farrier, Autumn 2012.

 

‘The Body Politic of Dissent: the Paperless and the Indignant,’ Citizenship Studies, Volume 16, Numbers 5-6, 1 August 2012 , pp. 783-792

 

‘Islamigration or the Other Within: Testing the Limits of European Democracy and Tolerance’, in Revista de Derecho Migratorio y Extranjería, Volume 21, July 2009, 11-20

 

'Autography from the Margins,' Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2008, 181-190

 

'The Regard of the Gypsy: Ramón Zabalza's gitano photographs and the visual challenge to the stereotype' in Prácticas de poder y estrategias de resistencia en la España democrática, edited by Óscar Cornago Bernal, special issue of Iberoamericana, 24.4, 2006

 

'Voicing Risk: migration, transgression and relocation in Spanish/Moroccan raï' in Interventions, Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 8, Issue 1, Summer 2006, 67-82

 

'Moor-Veiled-Matters: the hijab as troubling interrogative of the relation between the West and Islam', new formations, no. 51, winter 2003-2004, 39-49

 

'Memory in Motion: Ethnicity, Hybridity and Globalization in Self-Photographs of Moroccan Immigrants in Spain', Journal of Romance Studies, Vol.3.1, 2003, 73-86

 

'In Modernity's Wake: transculturality, deterritorialization and the question of community in Las flores de otro mundo', in Postscript, April 2002, 38-49

 

'Straddling the personal and the public: elastic boundaries or a case-study of two gitana daughters of renowned flamencos' in Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, Spring 2001, 49-63

 

‘Albums of No Return: Ethnicity, Displacement and Recognition in Photographs of Moroccan Immigrants in Spain', Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 1, March 2000, 59-73

 

'Between Being and Becoming: an ethnographic examination of border crossings in Alma gitana (Chus Gutiérrez, 1995)', Tesserae, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 5:2, December 1999, 173-188

 

 

Policy-relevant peer-reviewed publications

2021: I co-authored the report Migration, Pandemic, and Responses from the Third Sector: Lessons from Brazil and India: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/gpi/projects/migpanbrin/research-findings/

 

2018: I co-authored with Dr. Rebecca Brubaker, a report on addressing xenophobia, Surges and Swarms: A Conversation on Responsible Coverage of Migration: https://i.unu.edu/media/gcm.unu.edu/publication/4230/Bellagio-web-01ix18.pdf

 

2014-2016: I co-drafted the Model International Mobility Convention, as a Commission Member, under the directorship of Professor Michael W. Doyle, Global Policy Initiative, Columbia University: https://mobilityconvention.columbia.edu/about

 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1986-9393

Supervision

I welcome expressions of interest for doctoral supervision in the broad areas of migration, studies, cultural memory, gender studies, and photography studies.

As an experienced PhD supervisor, I also welcome opportunities to offer collaborative supervision across many areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as the Humanities and Medicine.

Public Engagement

Magazines

‘Beirut: City of Lines,’ Wasafiri, February 2013, Vol 28., p.10-12, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02690055.2013.744791

 

‘Homeward Bound? Questions on Promoting the Reintegration of Returning Migrants,’ UN Chronicle, No. 3, 2013, 30-33

 

 

Web and Media Publications

‘The rights of refugees in Africa are under threat: what can be done?,’ The Conversation, May 18^th 2022: https://theconversation.com/the-rights-of-refugees-in-africa-are-under-threat-what-can-be-done-182892

 

‘How the UK’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is 21^st century imperialism writ large,; The Conversation, April 22^nd 2022: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=parvati+nair+the+conversation+uk+rwanda&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

‘India’s Internal Migrants are Citizens too – the government must protect them,’ The Conversation, June 15^th 2020: https://theconversation.com/indias-internal-migrants-are-citizens-too-the-government-must-protect-them-140295

 

‘Changing Places: between Here and There, the Local and the Global,’ Migration Stories, February 26th 2019: https://www.merit.unu.edu/changing-places-between-here-there-the-local-the-global/ 

 

‘Refugee or Migrant? Sometimes the line is blurred,’ The Conversation, June 20^th 2017

https://theconversation.com/refugee-or-migrant-sometimes-the-line-is-blurred-79700

 

‘Sealed Lips, Sealed Borders: Contemporary Human Mobility and the Imperative of language,’

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/mediterranean-journeys-in-hope/sealed-lips-sealed-borders-contemporary-human-mobility-a/

 

‘Where to now? Governing the migration crisis in the Mediterranean’, openDemocracy, 9 September 2015.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/parvati-nair/where-to-now-governing-migration-crisis-in-mediterranean

 

‘Should Migration Have Been a Separate Goal?’, United Nations University, The Global Goals for Sustainable Development, 25 September 2015. http://unu.edu/publications/articles/migration-a-separate-goal.html

 

 ‘Why Photography Matters’, openDemocracy, 9 June 2015 https://www.opendemocracy.net/parvati-nair/why-photography-matters

 

‘Home-Work: Gender and Urban Immigrant Relocation’, openDemocracy, 10 June 2015. https://www.opendemocracy.net/parvati-nair/why-photography-matters

 

‘On gender and migration’, openDemocracy, 11 June 2015. https://www.opendemocracy.net/womenoftheworld/on-gender-and-migration

 

‘The Mediterranean Crisis: An Open Letter to World Leaders’, MERIT Website, 8 September 2015. http://unu.edu/publications/articles/mediterranean-crisis-open-letter.html

 

‘In Equatorial Guinea, What Would It Take for People Power to Triumph?,’ The Guardian, 20 February 2011 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/20/equatorial-guinea-hunger-strike

 

 ‘Photography and Nature’s Frame,’ The Guardian, 6 August 2010 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/aug/06/natures-frame-photography

 

‘Photo-reportage’s Thwarted Potential,’ The Guardian, 22 August 2010 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/22/photo-reportage-thwarted-potential

 

‘After-images: Trauma, History and Connection in the Work of Alfredo Jaar’

http://www.antropologia.cat/quaderns-e-169

 

‘Fire Under Plastic: immigration, or the open wounds of late capitalism’

http://www.nodo50.org/cubasigloXXI/congreso/nair_15abr03.pdf

 

 

Media collaborations

October 2022: New York Times, collaboration with the journalist Abdi Latif Tahir on the UK—Rwanda refugee deal: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/world/africa/migration-crisis-rwanda.html

 

September 2018: New York Times, extended collaboration with the journalist Raphael Minder on undocumented migrant street vendors in Spain and France: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/world/europe/spain-street-vendors-migrants.html

 

 

Participation in television, radio, online videos and podcasts

June 2022: TRT World Forum, participation in “Between Securitization and Human Rights: What’s Next for Refugees in Europe?”

 

April 2021: BBC World Service Forum, participation in programme on Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1rkz

 

September 2017: On cities and migration: https://www.citiestobe.com/parvati-nair-urbanization-would-not-happen-without-migration/

 

November 2016: Interviewing Noam Chomsky on the idea of ‘crisis’ in relation to migration: https://gcm.unu.edu/news/news/interview-with-noam-chomsky.html

 

September 2016: ‘The Figure of “The Immigrant” & National Identity’ at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK7E-wbWYJo

 

November 2015: ‘Universal,’ Tot un mon programme on my life and work in Barcelona on Catalan TV station TV3, https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/tot-un- mon/universal/video/5562477/

November 2014: Interview on international migration on European Radio Rodon 95: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xWfGh4LIRI

 

September 2014: Executive production and co-scripting of Three Violins, a short film on music, migration and urban life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT91s52V-Ok

 

October 2011: ‘Migration, Law and the Image: Beyond the veil of ignorance,’ with Prof. WJT Mitchell and Dr Ingrid Boccardi: https://mytuner-radio.com/podcast/migration-law-and-the-image-beyond-the-veil-of-ignorance-video-parvati-nair-queen-mary-dr-ingrid-boccardi-ucl-prof-wjt-mitchell-university-of-chicago-473942301

 

February 24^th 2010: ‘The Social Importance of Dance,’ an interview on women in flamenco on BBC Radio Three Women’s Hour

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/01/2010_08_wed.shtml