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Tosin.Durodola@ed.ac.uk
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Tosin Durodola
Job Title
PhD Student
Research interests
Research themes
Research interests
Title: Post-Refugee Liberians: Marginality, Nationness, and Contestation of Labelling and Territoriality in Host Communities
Introduction: This research, funded by the Graduate School of Social and Political Science (SSPS), aims to explore the idea of the impermanence of marginality and lack thereof. It investigates how individuals who have had their refugee status terminated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defy host community's labelling and expectations of insecurities and exclusion, resulting in a power struggle. The research also seeks to understand how these individuals are perceived by host communities and at a national level, and how socio-cultural and political boundaries are contested in shared spaces with hosts. This is an important area of inquiry as post-refugee experiences are often overlooked in international refugee policy and national development planning.
Supervisors: Dr. Maggie Dwyer Dr. Jean-Benoit Falisse
Background
Durodola, Tosin Samuel is a social anthropologist, research analyst, and policy communicator with expertise in post-refugee dispossession, displacement, insecurities, integration, development, and digital governance in Africa. He has received several awards and has worked in research and sub-national governance initiatives in Africa.
His academic research focuses on the longer-term effects of dispossession in Africa and how individuals, whose legal status is ambiguous, respond to the politics of labelling, insecurities, identity and place-making, territoriality, and the state's systems of control in host communities. His research challenges sedentarist and anti-sedentarist views on displacement, dispossession, and deterritorialization.
Tosin has published extensively in academic journals, including the Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change, African Currents, and Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration. His work is currently being reviewed for publication in the International Migration Review and Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies. He has also contributed to public outlets such as the University of Oxford's Centre of Migration, Policy and Society; Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder); Center for African Studies, University of Mumbai; and Routed Magazine.
In recognition of his exceptional scholarship, Tosin has received numerous awards, including the Global Thesis Award organised by Routledge and the Border Criminologies Network based at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. He is a Research Fellow of the French Institute for Research in Nigeria, a member of the Centre for Security Research SPS, a member of the Border Criminologies Network, and a Research Associate at the Reformers' Initiative for Development in Africa.
Tosin's professional experience includes serving as Special Assistant on Digital Communications to the Governor of Ekiti state since 2021. He is also involved in research on governance and development with other organizations such as Reformers of Africa, a pan-African civic-tech organization where a social accountability project - thecitizenswatch.com (a mobile digital tracker for government promises and citizenry development needs) is being expanded in Nigeria.
Tosin's academic qualifications are impressive. He was awarded funding from the Graduate School of Social and Political Science (SSPS) to pursue his PhD program at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, in 2022. He holds an M.A in African Studies (Diaspora and Transnational Studies) with the highest Distinction from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He completed his B.A (Hons) in History and International Studies at Bowen University, Nigeria, and obtained certification from the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism (CTC), Leiden University, Netherlands.