Anastasia Christou is Professor of Sociology and Social Justice, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, academic activist, trade unionist, feminist and anti-racist. An interdisciplinary critical scholar whose work is fully immersed in the humanities, social sciences and the arts in the pursuit of a public sociology which is relevant, meaningful and transformative, she extensively researches, publishes and teaches on issues of identity, emotion, inequality, intersectionality, ethics, decolonial and feminist pedagogies, social justice and exclusions as regards gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity in migrant, minority, youth and ageing groups, having engaged in multi-sited, multi-method and comparative ethnographic research in the US, UK, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, France, Iceland, Switzerland, while recently engaged in collaborative research in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, as well as with communities in Israel and Palestine.
Prior to my 2013 Readership appointment and 2014 Associate Professorship at Middlesex University, I was Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography and Convenor of the MA in Globalisation, Ethnicity and Culture, at the University of Sussex until December 2012. I was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Department of History, International and Social Studies at the University of Aalborg and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Academy for Migration Studies in Denmark (2004) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) (Social Science Research Center Berlin) in Germany (2007). I have been a Marie Curie Research Fellow and have conducted research for the University of York, Canada, and in Athens, Greece for ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy) and ANTIGONE (Information and Documentation Centre on Racism, Ecology, Peace and Non Violence).
In the course of my career I have been enriched as an academic, an activist, a feminist and an anti-racist through a journey in the humanities and social sciences to the arts. I remain a committed interdisciplinarian and critical scholar activist in the pursuit of a public sociology which is relevant, meaningful and impactful.
As a critical interdisciplinary scholar working across the humanities and the social sciences, engaging in empirical field research and extensively theorising from my findings, I have widely published research on issues of migration and mobilities; citizenship and ethnicity; space and place; transnationalism and identity; culture and memory; gender and feminism; inequalities and austerity; postsocialism; home, belonging and exclusion; emotion and narrativity; youth and ageing; sexualities; translocal geographies; affect, care and trauma; motherhood and mothering; women, men and masculinities; racisms and intersectionalities; gendered violence and social media; tourism mobilities; material culture; academic exclusion and solidarity; educational inequalities; embodiment. I also write poetry which recently has been published by the Feminist Review journal.
Books
Book Chapters
Christou, A. (2017) “Narrations of the Nation in Mobility Life Stories: Gendered Scripts, Emotional Spheres and Transnational Performativity in the Greek Diaspora”, in Jon Mulholland, Nicola Montagna and Erin Sanders-McDonagh, eds. Gendering Nationalism: Intersections of Nation, Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 299-314.
Page, B. Christou, A. and Mavroudi, L. (2017) Introduction: from time to timespace and forward to time again in migration studies, in Mavroudi, L. Page, B. and Christou, A. (eds.) Timespace and International Migration, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 1-16.
Christou, A. (2016) “Ageing in Exile: The Resilience of Unbearable and Unattainable Homelands in the Jewish and Cuban Imagination”, in Walsh, K. and Nare, L. (eds.) Re-thinking Home: Transnational Migration and Older Age, forthcoming, Routledge.
Christou, A. Sardinha, J. and Campos, R. (2016) “Understanding Acoustic Performativities, Youth Subjectivities and Mobile Identities”, in Sardinha, J. and Campos, R. (eds.) Transglobal Sounds: Music, Youth and Migration, Bloomsbury Books.
Working Papers & other publications
SPECIAL STUDIES & COUNTRY REPORTS
Raised and educated bilingually and then completing a DPhil in the UK and a PhD in Greece, I studied Latin and Ancient Greek and had immersion language training in French, Italian, Spanish, German and Danish.
Anastasia has extensively taught and convened a range of undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral modules in a variety of countries and subjects and has offered interdisciplinary teaching, particularly in the areas of cultural studies, ethnic and migration studies, feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, American and European studies.
Anastasia has also provided doctoral and post-doctoral mentoring and her students have received funding from both UK (AHRC & ESRC) and EU academic research funding bodies.
Anastasia is a member of the Humanities and Human Rights Collaborative Skills Development: The Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts - South-East England (CHASE), led by Prof. Les Back, Goldsmiths and Prof. Lyndsey Stonebridge, UEA, funded by the AHRC. She remains an Associate member of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies, the Centre for Gender Studies and the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, where she sustains research collaborations.
She currently co-supervises the following PhD students:
*Raya Needyanand: "Creole identity discourse: a post-colonial ethnographic study in contemporary Mauritius" (successful transfer now conducting field research)
*Neda Mohamadi: “State seeking in the arts, with a focus on the “Middle-East”: experiences, affairs and circumstances” (successful transfer now conducting field research)
*Terrance Belfon: "Race, Politics and Society in Contemporary Grenada"
Recently completed PhDs
*Nefeli Stournara: ‘Paradigmatic workers’: Sociologies of gender, class and ethnicity in the labour experiences of Albanian and ethnic Greek Albanian women cleaners at two Greek public hospitals (2020)
*Icram Serroukh: Faith Narratives on (Un)belonging: A Sociological Exploration of Women Leaving or Joining Islam (2020)
*Cemre Erciyes, Migration Studies: "Return" Migration to the Caucasus: Adyghe-Abkhaz Diaspora(s), Homeland, Adaptation" (2014)
*Christiana Karayianni, Media Studies: "The impact of different forms of communication on bicommunal relations in Cyprus" (2011)
*Zana Vathi, Migration Studies: "The children of Albanian migrants in Europe: ethnic identity, transnational ties and pathways of integration" (2011)
*Janine Teerling, Migration Studies: “'Return' of British-Born Greek Cypriots to Cyprus: An Ethnographic Study” (2010)
Anastasia has engaged in multi-sited, multi-method and comparative ethnographic research in the United States, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, France, Iceland and Switzerland.
In her research agenda she seeks to interrogate constructions and limitations to cultural citizenship and belonging with the rise of contemporary exclusions in understanding how both states and social subjects shape social relations.
As a critical interdisciplinary scholar working across the humanities and the social sciences, engaging in empirical field research and extensively theorising from my findings, she has widely published research on issues of migration and mobilities; citizenship and ethnicity; space and place; transnationalism and identity; culture and memory; gender and feminism; inequalities and austerity; postsocialism; home, belonging and exclusion; emotion and narrativity; youth and ageing; sexualities; translocal geographies; affect, care and trauma; motherhood and mothering; women, men and masculinities; racisms and intersectionalities; gendered violence and social media; tourism mobilities; material culture; academic exclusion and solidarity; educational inequalities; embodiment. Anastasia also write poetry which recently has been published by the Feminist Review journal.
Christou, Anastasia (2023) Making home through memories and ritualized social practices. In: Handbook on Home and Migration. Boccagni, Paolo , ed. Elgar Handbooks in Migration . Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781800882768 (Accepted/In press)
Christou, Anastasia (2023) Divergent democracy: Notes on a mediatised affective activism renewal of feminist and anti-fascist struggle in contemporary Greece. Cultural Dynamics , 35 (1-2). pp. 47-59. ISSN 0921-3740
Barrios Aquino, Marianela and Chanamuto, Nicola and Christou, Anastasia (2022) Introduction: emotions and mobilities: gendered, temporal and spatial representations. Emotions: History, Culture, Society , 2 (6). pp. 201-214. ISSN 2206-7485
Christou, Anastasia (2022) Theorising affective habitus in historical geographies of mobilities: unfolding spatio-temporal modalities. Emotions: History, Culture, Society , 2 (6). pp. 215-236. ISSN 2206-7485
Christou, Anastasia and Yeoh, Brenda (2022) Transnational mobilities and return migration. In: Handbook on Transnationalism. Yeoh, Brenda S. A. and Collins, Francis L. , eds. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781789904000
