2021/2022 NRF Fellows
Dr Farhana Rahman
Dr Farhana Rahman received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, Centre for Gender Studies, funded by the Cambridge International Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, amongst others. Through feminist ethnographic research, Farhana’s PhD focused on how the mass exodus of the Rohingya community to the refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, has transformed Rohingya gender relations and roles in displacement – specifically, how forced migration has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women. Read more about Dr Rahman here.
Dr Grant Mitchell
Dr Grant Mitchell has extensive experience in international refugee and asylum policy, including working with civil society, UN bodies, and governments in Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East on the development and implementation of alternatives to immigration detention. Grant served for 10 years as the Director of the International Detention Coalition (IDC), a global civil society network working to secure the rights of people impacted by immigration detention.
Read more about Dr Grant here.
Dr Tracey Donehue
Tracey Donehue is a PhD graduate from the UNSW School of Education. Her doctoral research was a participatory action research project with teachers in Indonesia focused on facilitating language teacher identities for unqualified teachers experiencing urban transitory displacement. She has five years’ experience as a teacher trainer and mentor for refugee teachers in Indonesia, and prior to that worked as an educator for Save the Children in the Australian Government detention centres on Nauru.
Read more about Dr Donehue here.
Dr Farhana Rahman
Dr Farhana Rahman received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, Centre for Gender Studies, funded by the Cambridge International Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, amongst others. Through feminist ethnographic research, Farhana’s PhD focused on how the mass exodus of the Rohingya community to the refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, has transformed Rohingya gender relations and roles in displacement – specifically, how forced migration has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women. Read more about Dr Rahman here.
Dr Grant Mitchell
Dr Grant Mitchell has extensive experience in international refugee and asylum policy, including working with civil society, UN bodies, and governments in Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East on the development and implementation of alternatives to immigration detention. Grant served for 10 years as the Director of the International Detention Coalition (IDC), a global civil society network working to secure the rights of people impacted by immigration detention.
Read more about Dr Grant here.
Dr Tracey Donehue
Tracey Donehue is a PhD graduate from the UNSW School of Education. Her doctoral research was a participatory action research project with teachers in Indonesia focused on facilitating language teacher identities for unqualified teachers experiencing urban transitory displacement. She has five years’ experience as a teacher trainer and mentor for refugee teachers in Indonesia, and prior to that worked as an educator for Save the Children in the Australian Government detention centres on Nauru.
Read more about Dr Donehue here.
Dr Farhana Rahman
Dr Farhana Rahman received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, Centre for Gender Studies, funded by the Cambridge International Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, amongst others. Through feminist ethnographic research, Farhana’s PhD focused on how the mass exodus of the Rohingya community to the refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, has transformed Rohingya gender relations and roles in displacement – specifically, how forced migration has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women. Her peer-reviewed articles and chapters have been published in various journals and edited volumes, including Journal of Refugee Studies, Feminist Review, and Journal of International Women’s Studies.
Farhana is a Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center and is also co-founder of Silkpath Relief Organization (silkpathrelief.org), a non-profit providing humanitarian assistance to individuals devastated by calamities – in Afghanistan, and with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia. In 2015, she helped establish the first academic program in gender studies in Afghanistan, based at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, where she was a lecturer. Since 2014, she has worked as a consultant providing technical expertise and trainings on gender equality, social policy, and human rights for various projects with UN Women, UNDP, and USAID in Asia and Africa. For her extensive research and work in the field of gender and development, Farhana was the 2021 recipient of the Paula Kantor Award from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).
Farhana can be contacted at farahman@fas.harvard.edu
Dr Grant Mitchell
Dr Grant Mitchell has extensive experience in international refugee and asylum policy, including working with civil society, UN bodies, and governments in Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East on the development and implementation of alternatives to immigration detention.
Grant served for 10 years as the Director of the International Detention Coalition (IDC), a global civil society network working to secure the rights of people impacted by immigration detention. He has previously worked with the Swedish Migration Board, the Australian Red Cross, was a founding Board member of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), and is a recipient of the Australian Human Rights Award for his work to secure the release of women and children from immigration detention. Grant currently serves as a Board Director of Uniting, the largest community service organisation in Australia.
A social anthropologist, his recent PhD thesis focused on how civil society can effectively engage governments for rights-based policy change. The model of effective engagement he developed has been “a new, original, and potentially life-changing contribution” for human rights advocacy.
Grant can be contacted at gmitchell@free-to-live.org
Dr Tracey Donehue
Tracey Donehue is a PhD graduate from the UNSW School of Education. Her doctoral research was a participatory action research project with teachers in Indonesia focused on facilitating language teacher identities for unqualified teachers experiencing urban transitory displacement. She has five years’ experience as a teacher trainer and mentor for refugee teachers in Indonesia, and prior to that worked as an educator for Save the Children in the Australian Government detention centres on Nauru. She completed her Master of Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Her Master’s thesis applied an identity theoretical framework to the issue of displacement, utilising a critical discourse analysis approach to the ascribed identities imposed on her former students on Nauru.
Tracey currently resides in Laos, though she regularly visited Indonesia, prior to Covid restrictions, in her capacity as the GED Support Project manager for the Bogor region. Tracey established the GEDSP in 2018 as the first program to support people experiencing displacement in Indonesia to access formal education credentials. The GEDSP is supported by UNHCR Indonesia, and is currently being replicated in other sites of urban transitory displacement where people are systematically excluded from formal education. Tracey is passionate about the transformative potential of education for people in marginalising situations, both as a means of enhancing their current psycho-social well-being, as well as broadening the range of their future opportunities.
Tracey can be contacted at donehuetracey@gmail.com