Zerrin Özlem Biner is a Senior Lecturer at the anthropology department at SOAS
University. Her work focuses on themes of state, citizenship, political violence,
forced displacement and return, memory, and diasporic communities. She is currently the principle investigator of the AHRC funded Archives of Solidarity project.

Zerrin Özlem Biner is also the Co-Director of the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS

Leyla Neyzi, an anthropologist and oral historian, is retired Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Currently, she is Lecturer at Glasgow University. She has conducted internationally funded research projects and published articles, books and edited books on oral history, memory studies, nationalism and minorities, and youth culture in Turkey.

Sabine Strasser is social anthropologist at the University of Bern. Her research
projects and publications focus on migration, mobility, transnational studies and
humanitarian borders with a particular interest in Turkey, Austria and Europe. Her
most recent publications deal with crises talk and affective economies of in/voluntary return

Tom Parkinson is an educational sociologist working across the fields of higher
education, community development and music. Since 2017 his work has focused on participatory action research with displaced communities in northwest Syria and
Türkiye. He is Reader in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the
University of Kent.

David Herd is a poet, critic and co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales. His critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World (OUP, 2023) has been shortlisted for the 2024 MSA Book Prize. Walk Song (Shearsman, 2022), was a Book of the Year in the Australian Review of Books. He teaches at the University of St Andrews where he is Berry Chair of Literature and Human Rights.

Özge Biner is a researcher at the Collège de France. She received her PhD in
Sociology from Strasbourg University. Her research engages with the political, legal and social effects of the experience of exile in the border zones of Europe and the Middle East. Since 2015, she has been conducting ethnographic research on the Turkish-Syrian border focusing on the experience of forced displacement and forced return in the context of Syrian war

Kemal Vural Tarlan has been conducting visual sociology and anthropology research among Dom/Gypsies communities living in the Middle East since 2000. His studies, articles and photos were featured in numerous international symposia, congresses, exhibitions and other events. He has written penned articles on the rights of refugees from the Middle East and worked as an activist. He is a member of the International Federation of Journalists and is a member of the European Sociological Association.

Amir Massoumian is social anthropologist and post-doctoral researcher in the
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS) whose main research interests include politics, ethics, gender, and far-right
epistemologies.

Mujge Kucukkeles is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, and a research associate at the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS. Her research examines the politics of humanitarianism and international development, exploring its intersections with the state, nationalism and citizenship in politically liminal spaces in the Middle East, with a specific focus on Iraqi Kurdistan. More recently, her work is shifting towards investigating nonWestern forms of humanitarianism and solidarity activism in the Global South, particularly within Turkey.

Hande is in the final stages of her PhD in the Film and Television Department at the University of Warwick. She holds an MA in Journalism and Documentary Practice from the University of Sussex. Her research explores the documentation of madness while fostering inclusive mental health representation through allyship and DIY practices, as well as examining institutional film practices. Recently, she has contributed to Media Practice and Education, the Journal of PGR Pedagogic Practice, and Sociology of Health and Illness. Her monograph, Documentary as Autoethnography: A Case Study Based on the Changing Surnames of Women, was published by Vernon Press as part of its Anthropology Series. As an occasional editor for Disability & Society, her work aligns with interests in critical disability theory, experimental cinema, first-person film, gender studies, mad studies, participatory action research, and visual anthropology. Her films have been screened at international festivals.

Razia Shariff is the Chief Executive Officer for Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN), who are AoS’s UK project partner. She has more than 25 years’ experience of working in senior management in the third sector in London and Kent. She has been on boards and forums for national and local government and is currently on the Refugee Action Insights Hub Advisory Group. She is currently a Non-Executive Director of a Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust and was previously a volunteer grants panel member for Children in Need.

Bilge Taş completed her master’s degree in Women’s Studies at Ankara University.
While pursuing her PhD in Cinema, she focused on the political economy of film festivals. In 2015, she was a visiting scholar at the Department of Film Festival Studies at the University of St Andrews. For 16 years, she has been engaged in rightsbased issues related to gender equality, culture, and the arts. In 2011, she co-founded Pink Life Queer Fest. She continues to work as a mentor and consultant with various non-governmental organisations, particularly in culture, arts, and gender