European and Transnational Studies

Gender & Ethnic Studies

• Critical Discourses of Cosmopolitanisms
• Far Right Populism & Gender
• Normalisation, difference and otherness
• Migration, Citizenship and the EU
• Social Inequalities (focus on class, gender and ethnicity) and Social Justice
• Diaspora, Loss & Displacement
• Feminist Theory (Intersectionality)

I am a Lecturer in Sociology, based in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work here at QUB. I joined QUB via the prestigious QUB Fellowship (March 2015 - June 2019, Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice).

Before coming to Belfast I held Post Doc Research Fellowships at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), at the University of Sheffield, and at the University of Luxembourg. I studied law and sociology in Germany, and specialised through my MA and PhD in London, in Gender & Ethnic Studies.

My research engages theoretically and empirically with the (de-)construction of racialised, classed and gendered group boundaries, looking at processes of normalisation and the critique of it. I publish on these issues in the context of gendered cosmopolitanism, populism and various archives of racisms as shifting axes of difference and otherness, for more than 10 years. My focus is on Europe, looking at processes of European socialisation and the emergence of multi-layered transnational identities.

I am a comparativist, who applies a range of qualitative methods (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis; visual methods/ semiotics; narrative methods).

Countries of expertise include: Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Poland, Austria and Turkey.

As a political and historical sociologist I analyse patterns of migration, mobility and citizenship (e.g. the situation of asylum seekers and refugees in NI), the recent rise of far right populism and its normalisation in Europe and beyond, and further look at conceptual issues related to social inequality and justice (e.g. class, gender & ethnicity).

Currently, I am writing two books: my second monograph, Loss and Liquid Citizenship: the post-migration condition-  looks at the fragile conditionality of citizenship rights as well at the migration and mobility nexus in a populist age (with ROUTLEDGE). The second book is co-authored (with Scott Poynting, Autralia) and concentrates on the normalisation of the global far right. This book is commissioned by Emerald Publishing.

I co-edited with my dearest mentor, friend and colleague Prof Nira Yuval-Davis (UEL), 'The Situated Politics of Belonging' (also with Prof Kalpana Kannabiran), published in 2006 (with SAGE).

My first monograph, Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: a feminist perspective' was published with ASHGATE (now ROUTLEDGE),  in 2012.

https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Cosmopolitanism-in-Europe-A-Feminist-Perspective/Vieten/p/book/9781409433835

In 2016, I published the co-edited book (with G. Valentine) 'Cartographies of Differences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives', this book is now available (August 2018) as OPEN ACCESS.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/46955?tab=aboutauthor&format=MOBI

My theoretical interest in the tension between processes of normalisation (and the critique of it) on the one hand and notions of democratic inclusion led first to a symposium I organised in Amsterdam in 2012; and second, in 2014 to an edited collection:

REVISITING IRIS MARION YOUNG ON NORMALISATION, INCLUSION and DEMOCRACY

I am internationally and professionally organised with the International Sociological Association (ISA), since 2003. Between 2010 and summer 2018 I was elected Board Member of the ISA Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity (RC05).

As part of these activities I am convening and contributing to different ISA Forum and World Congresses of Sociology, e.g. in Durban/ SA (2006), Goeteborg/ Sweden (2010) Buenos Aires/ Argentina (2012), Yokohama/ Japan (2014), Vienna/ Austria (2016), Toronto/ Canada (2018) and Porto Allegre/ Brazil (2020).

Further, I am member of the Irish Sociological Association (SAI), and the European Association of Sociology (ESA), here with the RN15  (global, transnational and cosmopolitan sociology) and RN32 (political sociology), connecting to my expertise on gender, ethnicity and transnational Europeanisation. 

From January 2020, I am on the new editorial team (special responsibility:book reviews) of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/recp20/current

I convened the MA Dissertation Module of the Mitchell Institute's Master programme, 2018/ 2019, and 2019/2020.

Further, I taught 'gender, conflict and justice' as part of the theoretical module of the Master programme, in 2017/2018, and 2018/ 2019.

Having moved to SSESW in June 2019, I am convening SOC9012 (Approaches to Social Research) as part of the MRes program, in 2019/ 2020, and convene 'Understanding Gender & Migration' (SOC2051), in 2019/ 2020.