Dr Maja Hertoghs joins the team in 2023

Dr Maja Hertoghs works at the anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam as assistant professor where she teaches in the field of gender and sexuality studies. In September 2019 she defended her dissertation, Intensities of the State, on the bureaucratic infrastructures of the Dutch asylum procedure, especially in the detention center near Schiphol airport. She followed application processes for years and especially focused on the work of the procedure’s professionals – the IND, asylum lawyers and the refugee council – and how their (different) ways of engaging with asylum applicants shapes an asymmetrically intimate and ruthless practice of ‘objective’ decision-making. She is currently working on publishing papers about compassion and suspicion, passionate bureaucracies, state work and affects of objectivity. 

In this project, Maja is exploring new research avenues focused on politics of (in)hospitality in relation to queer refugees in Nordic European countries. She is looking into ways in which queer tourists and (illegalized) queer refugees are ‘un/welcomed’ in cities mythologized as gay-paradise like Reykjavik and Amsterdam.

Linda: Our field researcher in Iceland

Linda Sólveigar- og Guðmundsdóttir is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Iceland and a researcher at the RIKK Institute, in the project Queer Refugees in Queer Utopias: Inclusions and Exclusions. Her PhD project discusses queer migrations to Iceland from the Global South, Global North and Central and Eastern Europe, in terms of the politics of belonging as well as experiences of the affective relationality of (un)belonging, regarding migrants’ ethnic community, the queer community and the wider Icelandic society. Linda identifies i.e., as demifemale and neuroqueer, and has a BA in sociology from the University of Iceland and MA in sociology from City University of London.

Linda is the project’s field researcher in Iceland and is responsible for conducting interviews with SOGIE asylum seekers and refugees with diverse legal statuses. Interviews with professionals in the asylum system in Iceland, in roles of social support in municipality social services and NGO services and advocacy groups, in collaboration with Guðbjörg Ottósdóttir the principal investigator. She further is responsible for the comparative analysis with an ongoing research on SOGIE refugees’ experiences in the Netherlands.

Guðbjörg Ottósdóttir is principal investigator

Guðbjörg is principal investigator in this research project. She is an associate professor in social work at the faculty of social work, University of Iceland. Her research area has focused on migration and settlement.  She identifies as a cis lesbian. Amongst the projects she has been involved in is research on refugee settlement, migration and disability, formal and informal care in refugee and asylum-seeking families and research focusing on experiences of settlement amongst children in migrant and refugee families in Iceland. Guðbjörg has a previous professional background as a social worker in the UK, Iceland, Canada in areas of welfare and social support with adults, children, migrants and refugees and LGBTQ+ people.

Árdís: Our field researcher in Greece and Italy

Árdís K. Ingvars is an adjunct in Sociology and a researcher at the RIKK Institute, at the University of Iceland. Currently she is focusing on the experiences of queer refugees who are deported from the Nordic states to Italy and Greece on the Dublin grounds. She is, furthermore, associated with the Centre for Gender Studies at Karlstad University where she follows refugee activist from a previous study in Greece, as they un-settle in Germany.

Árdís is the project’s field researcher and is responsible for conducting interviews with SOGIE refugees that have been deported via the Dublin convention to Greece and Italy. The intent of this part of the project is to investigate social experiences of reception, integration and deportation of SOGIE refugees. Our overall aim to improve policies, increase acceptance of diverse queer experiences, and procure an interactive online information site, for queer refugees.

In the past, Árdís has published the following research:

Proactive reciprocity: educational trajectories reclaimed through patterns of care. In M. Inhorn and L. Volk (eds), (Un)Settling Middle Eastern Refugees: Regimes of Exclusion and Inclusion in the Middle East, Europe, and North America (p.149-165). Berghahn Series on Forced Migration.

Muligheder for arbeidsinkludering: Perspektiver fra Island [e. Opportunities for work inclusion: perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities in Iceland] (Co-authored with Stefan Hardonk). In H. Gjertsen, L. Melbøe, H. Hauge (eds), Arbeidsinkludering for personer med utviklingshemming (p. 77-89). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget

Border masculinities: Emergent subjectivities through humanity, morality and mobility. PhD, Sociology, University of Iceland. Reykjavík: University Press.

The Social Butterfly: Hunted Subjectivity and Emergent Masculinities among Refugees. NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, 14(4), 239-254.

Moral mobility: Emergent Refugee Masculinities among Young Syrians in Athens. (co-authored with Ingólfur V. Gíslason). Men and Masculinities, 21(3), 383-402.