Research
I study precarious migration and its representation across a range of media. Situated in critical refugee studies, this interdisciplinary work links topics related to global migration, media, and transnational Italy. This work, which has been recognized with ACLS and NEH grants, uses the methods of ethnography, oral history, and media and narrative analysis to consider how border crossing is entangled with histories of violence and conquest, bordering, and racial capitalism, as well as practices of solidarity and abolitionist politics.
My research focuses especially on Mediterranean migration and questions of asylum, migrant reception, human rights, and racial justice in Europe and in particular Italy. In this work, I aim to shape understandings of the relationship between mobility, sovereignty, memory, rights, and belonging in and beyond the Mediterranean.
My published work has covered topics including migrant reception and crisis racism in Italy, the politics of rescue, refugee filmmaking and life writing, deterrence media, and comparative work across Mediterranean and North American border zones. I've also talked about these issues in public-facing outlets and via the podcast Migrations: A World on the Move. My book Emergency in Transit, about emergency responses to migration in Italy, came out in November 2024. I’m currently at work on a project about notions of protection and safety in border spaces and how these concepts are alternately weaponized or reimagined at sites including farms, rescue ships, and detention sites.
Journal articles and book chapters
“Literary Hospitality in Memoir and Anthology by Igiaba Scego: Narrative Ethics and Broader Questions of Autobiographical Fetishism,” Women Language Literature in Italy / Donna Lingua Letteratura in Italia, 7, 69-88, 2025
Black Mediterranean Hauntings: Border Violence, Burial, and Anti-Racist Care Work in Strange Fish, in “Bodies that Haunt” issue, Cultural Studies 39, 887-911, 2025
Refuting State-Centric Framings: Response to David Owen’s 'From Forced Migration to Displacement?' Refugee Survey Quarterly, “Responses to Displacement,” June 2025
Migration Imaginaries: Wreckage, Ruination, and Recovery, in Wendy S. Hesford, Momar K. Ndiaye, and Amy Shuman (eds), Human Rights on the Move, OSU Press, pp. 27-44, 2024
Choreographing Mobility and Human Rights: A Conversation with Momar Ndiaye, Eleanor Paynter, and Amy Shuman, in Human Rights on the Move, pp. 45-55, 2024
Creating Crises: Risk, Racialization, and the Migration-Security Nexus in Italy and the US, in Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Maddalena Marinari and Daniele Fiorentino (eds), Managing Migration in Italy and the United States, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, pp. 55-76, 2024
Performing Border Externalisation: Media Deterrence Campaigns and Neoliberal Belonging, co-authored with Sara Riva, Geopolitics, vol. 29, issue 4, pp. 1272-1296, 2024
Italy: Post-1990 Policies and Trends at Europe’s Southern Border, co-authored with Francesca Soliman, in Ana Vila-Freyer and Ibrahim Sirkeci (eds), Global Atlas of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Migration Series, vol. 45, Transnational Press London, pp. 159-173, 2023
Gendered Asylum in the Black Mediterranean: Two Nigerian Women’s Experiences of Reception in Italy, in R. Zapata-Barrero and I. Awad (eds), Migrations in the Mediterranean, IMISCOE Research Series, Springer, 2023
“OutLaw Yard”: Reading Traces of Displacement as Testimonial Inscription, co-authored with Katrina M. Powell, Migration and Society, vol. 6, n. 1, pp. 87-104, 2023
Testimony on the Move: Navigating the Borders of (In)visibility with Migrant-Led Soundwalks, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 37, n. 1, pp. 129-152, 2022
Writing against border imperialism: epistemologies of transit, Italian Studies in South Africa (special issue on Diversity, decolonization, and Italian studies), vol. 35, n. 1, pp. 92-96, 2022
Border Crises and Migrant Deservingness: How the Refugee/Economic Migrant Binary Racializes Asylum and Affects Migrants’ Navigation of Reception, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, vol. 20, n. 2, pp. 293-306, 2022
The Transits and Transactions of Migritude in Bay Mademba's Il mio viaggio della speranza (My Voyage of Hope), the minnesota review, in "migritude folio", issue 94, pp. 104-123, 2020
The Liminal Lives of Europe’s Transit Migrants, Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social Worlds, vol. 17, n. 2, pp. 40-45, 2018
Autobiographical Docudrama as Testimony: Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 32, n. 3, pp. 659-666, 2017
The Spaces of Citizenship: Mapping Personal and Colonial Histories in Contemporary Italy in Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono (My Home is Where I Am), European Journal of Life Writing, vol. 6, pp. 135-153, 2017
Supreme Court rules Trump can rapidly deport immigrants to Libya, South Sudan and other countries they aren’t from, The Conversation, June 24, 2025
Rescue Amid Shifting Politics in the Central Mediterranean, Forced Migration Review, Issue 75 “Dangerous Journeys,” May 28, 2025
Externalized Asylum Processing, So-Called Safe Countries, and the Uncertain Future of the Italy-Albania Protocol, Border Criminologies Blog, January 15, 2025
Media Deterrence Campaigns: Border Externalisation and Neoliberal Belonging, co-authored with Sara Riva, Border Criminologies Blog, November 6, 2023
Beyond Numbers: Confronting Europe's Broken Border System, The Globe Post, May 30, 2023
‘I’m not a refugee, I’m a person’: Rethinking Power and Community in Humanitarian Contexts, co-authored with Giovanni Fontana and Dina Pasic of Second Tree, Routed Magazine, Creative Migration Policy issue, March 2023
A court case against migrant activists in Italy offers a reminder – not all refugees are welcome in Europe, The Conversation, May 13, 2022. Italian translation published in Internazionale, May 19, 2022
The U.K. wants to send refugees to Rwanda. That’s become a trend, co-authored with Christa Kuntzelman and Rachel Beatty Riedl for The Washington Post, April 20, 2022
Death on the Central Mediterranean: 2013-2020, co-authored with Annalisa Camilli, The New Humanitarian, January 12, 2021
Seeking asylum in Italy: assessing risks and options, Forced Migration Review 65, "recognising refugees" feature, Nov. 2020, pp. 50-51, also in Spanish, French and Arabic
Border Agency Recruitment: Circulating Narratives that Criminalize Asylum and Erase Border Violence, co-authored with Sara Riva, Discover Society, October 2020
‘Have I really survived?’: On home, refuge, and quarantine in Rome, co-authored with Khaled Karri, Routed Magazine, “Epidemics, Labour and Mobility” issue, June 2020. Also in Spanish, Chinese, and with the Coronavirus and Mobility Forum of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS)
EU Must Stop Equating Protecting Borders With Asylum Management, The Globe Post, March 5, 2020
Tunisia: North Africa's overlooked migration hub, co-authored with Annalisa Camilli, The New Humanitarian, January 22, 2020
Closing the Vučjak Camp doesn’t resolve the humanitarian crisis for migrants in Bosnia, co-authored with Annalisa Camilli, openDemocracy, December 13, 2019
The White Readymade and the Black Mediterranean: Authoring “Barca Nostra”, co-authored with Nicole Miller, Los Angeles Review of Books, September 22, 2019
Janet Biggs: Overview Effect, co-authored with Nicole Miller, The Brooklyn Rail, Jul. 2019
Italy’s Shutdown of Huge Migrant Center Feeds Racist Campaign to Close Borders, The Globe Post, July 16, 2019
Europe’s refugee crisis explains why border walls don’t stop migration, The Conversation, January 30, 2019
Transit Migration in Europe: Methods and Dialogues, a reflection on my Summer 2017 fieldwork, September 22, 2017
La Pirogue: the Myth of Europe and the Realities of the Journey, review of La Pirogue screening, March 6, 2017
Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) and ‘Practices of Reception’, a review of Fuocoammare screening, February 6, 2017
No, Mr. President-Elect, You Are Mistaken: We Welcome Refugees at the Ohio State University, The Daily Kos, December 8, 2016
Public scholarship
Reviews and translations
Review: Camilla Hawthorne’s Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2022), Antipode Online, February 20, 2023.
Review: The Black Mediterranean Collective's The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship (Palgrave, 2021), Antipode Online, November 8, 2021.
Translation: The Two of Me (Io siamo in due) by Gabriella Kuruvilla in M. Orton, G. Parati and R. Kubati (eds.), Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021.
Review: Stephanie Malia Hom's Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention (Cornell UP, 2019), Italian Studies, vol. 74, n. 4, 2019.
Translation: Liquid Border, excerpt from Annalisa Camilli's The Law of the Sea (La legge del mare, Rizzoli, 2019), The New Inquiry, August 20, 2019.
2023 Interviewed for “Unmasking Europe’s Deadly Migration Policy,” by Bianca Carrera Espriu, Green European Journal, Mar. 24
2022 Interviewed for Vox’s Today, Explained podcast, episode: “Motel Rwanda,” June 7
2021 Interview on the Public Cultural Studies podcast, “Migration and Testimony with Dr. Eleanor Paynter,” Oct. 1
2021 Interviewed on TRT World Roundtable, episode: “Do Border Walls Prevent Migration?” Sept. 10
2021 Profile: “Award recipient builds Migrations community at Cornell,” by Priya Pradhan, Cornell Chronicle, Apr. 13
2019 Interviewed for: “Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich,” by Nacha Cattan, Bloomberg News, Oct. 19