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Deena Dajani

Researcher, Human Settlements

Deena has conducted ethnographic and participatory research with refugee and migrant populations in East Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and worked on multi-disciplinary projects building partnerships with civil society to work towards more inclusive urban spaces.
Full biography

Deena is a researcher on the GCRF-ESRC project ‘Protracted displacement in an urban world’, a large-scale comparative study examining wellbeing and livelihoods in cities and camps in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Jordan and Kenya.

She is co-investigator on the British Academy project ‘Rethinking humanitarian aid for refugees as investment in urban water and sanitation’, a multidisciplinary project that brings together engineers and social scientists to investigate water technologies alongside the social relationships around water, including gender relationships and refugee-host relationships.

Deena is also co-investigator on an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Living in difference and in common: urban refugees and convivial cultures in Kenya’ that combines ethnographic research and film to document displaced people and civic actors’ practices and contributions to convivial culture in urban centres.

Expertise

Ethnographic and participatory research; borders, migration and citizenship; building partnerships with civil society; inclusive urban spaces.

Before IIED
  • Postdoctoral researcher on 'Praxis: arts and humanities for global development” at the University of Leeds (2019-20)
  • Postdoctoral researcher on “Digital makings in the city of refuge” at LSE (2018-19)
  • Consultant on joint project between The Open University, UNWomen and WFP in Al-Zaatari and Al-Azraq refugee camps in Jordan (2018)

Education

  • PhD in social sciences, Loughborough University

Current work

Wellbeing in contexts of displacement; conviviality in migrant cities; water, gender and refugee-host relationships.

Deena Dajani's picture
Email: 
deena.dajani@iied.org
ORCID
Google Scholar
ResearchGate
 
Languages: English, Arabic (fluent), Swahili (basic)

Deena Dajani's blog posts

View of a busy street with clothes stalls and shops and people walking.

Research with refugees: taking care not to cut a long story short

Blog, Feb 2022
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50 years linking local to global

Find out more about IIED’s plans in our 50th birthday year: our achievements and what comes next…

IIED's mission is to build a fairer, more sustainable world, using evidence, action and influence in partnership with others. We link local priorities and global challenges, and our 2019-2024 strategy details how we will Make Change Happen

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