Dr Andreas Hackl
Job Title
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology of Development
Room number
3.23Street (Address)
18 Buccleuch PlaceCity (Address)
EdinburghCountry (Address)
UKPost code (Address)
EH8 9LDResearch interests
Research interests
I am Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Development currently working on the inclusion and exclusion of refugees in the digital economy. This research agenda evolved with the help of an ESRC-funded New Investigator Grant (2019-2021). As part of this work, I have been supporting the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) as a consultant in a project that seeks to improve the working conditions of refugees in the digital economy and reduce the digital risks they face.
An earlier postdoctoral project at the University of Edinburgh explored the role of labour mobility in contexts of extreme inequality and political conflict. I was especially interested in the impact of labour migration on the socio-economic development in Palestinians' home areas in the West Bank. The project ran for one year and was funded by the ESRC Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
This postdoctoral research built on my PhD in Social Anthropology, completed in 2016 at the University of Edinburgh after two years of research among Palestinians in the city of Tel Aviv, funded by a DOC-Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Since 2011 I have also worked as a media correspondent and freelance analyst in Israel-Palestine and Jordan. I have been Israel-Palestine correspondent of the Austrian newspapaer Wiener Zeitung and until 2014, Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday edition of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). I also contributed regularly to The New Humanitarian.
As former co-convener of Peace and Conflict Studies in Anthropology (PACSA), one of the major networks of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), I held a long-standing interest in the research of conflicts and efforts to transform or resolve them, including peace activism and civil resistance. Other major research interests are mobility and inequality, forced displacement, migration, mobility, digital labour, and the Middle East.
Background
I am a co-director of the MSc programme in International Development and co-director of the Digital Global Development Research Cluster. Current courses I teach include Digital Global Development, and Migration and Forced Displacement in a Digital Age.
I was a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2019 and before that, a Visiting Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, as part of the Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion.
I am open to supervise PhD students with projects aligned with my research interests and expertise.
Selected publications
Books
Hackl, Andreas. 2022. The Invisible Palestinians: The Hidden Struggle for Inclusion in Jewish Tel Aviv. Indiana University Press.
Hackl, Andreas (ed.) 2022. Permitted Outsiders: Good Citizenship and the Conditional Inclusion of Migrant and Immigrant Minorities. Routledge
Hackl, Andreas (ed.) 2021. Digital refugee livelihoods and decent work: Towards inclusion in a fairer digital economy. International Labour Organization, Geneva.
Miriam Gutekunst, Hackl, Andreas et al. (eds.) 2016: Bounded Mobilities: Social Hierarchies and Global Inequalities. Columbia University Press/Transcript, Berlin
Journal articles and book chapters
2023. Staying sane and safe in Israel/Palestine: a foreign researcher’s reflections on fieldwork across boundaries. In Nerina Weiss, Linda Green, Earl Grassing (Des) The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World. Routledge.
Hackl, A. and W. Najdi (2023). "Online work as humanitarian relief? The promise and limitations of digital livelihoods for Syrian refugees and Lebanese youth during times of crisis." Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 0(0).
2023. "Connecting without Protecting: Intermediating the Internet Economy in Digital Livelihoods Provision for Refugees." Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 4(3): 13-21.
2023. Easton-Calabria, E. and A. Hackl. "Refugees in the Digital Economy: The Future of Work among the Forcibly Displaced." Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 4(3): 1-12.
2022 Good immigrants, permitted outsiders: conditional inclusion and citizenship in comparison, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45:6, 989-1010, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2021.2011938
2022 Occupied labour: dispossession through incorporation among Palestinian workers in Israel, Settler Colonial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2022.2032545
2021 Rushworth, Philip, and Andreas Hackl. “Writing Code, Decoding Culture: Digital Skills and the Promise of a Fast Lane to Decent Work among Refugees and Migrants in Berlin.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2021.
2020. The good Arab: conditional inclusion and settler colonial citizenship among Palestinian citizens of Israel in Jewish Tel Aviv. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26 (3): 594-611.
2018 “Immersive Invisibility in the settler colonial city: the conditional inclusion of Palestinians in Tel Aviv,” American Ethnologist 45 (3).
2018 “Mobility Equity in a Globalized World: Reducing Inequalities in the Sustainable Development Agenda,” World Development 112.
2017 “Key figure of mobility: the exile,” Social Anthropology 25 (1): 55-68.
2016 "An Orchestra of Civil Resistance: Privilege, Diversity and Identification among cross-border Activists in a Palestinian Village,” Peace & Change 41 (2): 167–193.
Recent reports
Towards decent work for young refugees and host communities in the digital platform economy in Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2021.
Selected commentary and analysis
Occupied labour: The treadmill of Palestinian work in Israel. An investigation into how Palestinians escape the poverty trap by working in Israel but only at the terrible cost of failing to build and sustain their own local economies. IRIN, 2017.
An irresistible force? Arab citizens of Israel after the elections, in "OpenSecurity: Conflict and peacebuilding" - opendemocracy.net, 2015.
After the war: Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, in "OpenSecurity: Conflict and peacebuilding" - opendemocracy.net, 2014.
Analysis: Politics and power in Jordan’s Za'atari refugee camp. IRIN, 2013.
Analysis: Politics and humanitarianism in Israel-oPt. IRIN, 2013.
Analysis: Israeli government challenges the law to embrace illegal settler outposts. IRIN, 2012.
Briefing: The detention and imprisonment of Palestinians in oPt/Israel. IRIN, 2012.
Analysis: Visions for a healthier West Bank economy. IRIN, 2012.
Analysis: Revisiting the Rules of War in Israel/oPt. IRIN , 2012.
Works within
Staff Hours and Guidance
My weekly office hours are Wednesday 10:45 - 12:15. Prior booking for in-person and online meetings is required through my booking page: book a meeting.