Nergis Canefe, Visiting Fellowship 2023/24

Biography

Nergis Canefe is a Full Professor at the Department of Politics, York University, Toronto, Canada, and a graduate faculty member at Graduate Programmes in Social and Political Thought, Socio-Legal Studies, Humanities, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Law at the same institution. She received her PhD at York University, Programme in Social and Political Thought, and her SJD (PhD in Law) on international criminal law at Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada.

She is a Middle Eastern-Canadian scholar of forced migration studies, political philosophy, comparative politics, and international criminal law. Before joining York University, she was the inaugural post-doctoral fellow of the Past and Present Society, Oxford University, a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and the European Institute, London School of Economics. She also held teaching posts at Binghamton University, New York, USA, Bogazici and Bilgi University in Turkey, and Shanghai University, China. She was a Harley Harlett scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School and has held two consecutive fellowships at IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna, Austria (2021/2022). She has widely published on historical injustice, accountability regimes, politics of dispossession, mass displacement, excesses of nationalism, trauma and memory as well as ethics of witnessing and war crimes/crimes against humanity nexus. Her most recent research addresses the dispossession of unorthodox minorities in the Middle East, and, the ethics of witnessing vis-à-vis work on human suffering.

Canefe is the current and immediate past Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), and the inaugural program co-director for the organization’s Arts and Forced Migration initiative. She served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Forced Migration, Northwestern University, USA, Royal Roads University, School of Justice Studies, Canada, and Delhi School of Transnational Affairs (DSTA), Delhi University, India. She is the co-editor of the journal Journal of Conflict Transformation and Security (2019-ongoing), and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Nations and Nationalism (1998-2006), Displaced Voices: Journal of Living Archives, and Mülkiye SBF Dergisi. She has been a frequent guest editor for the journal Refuge published by MCRG, Kolkata, India. She served as the Associate Director for the Center for Refugee Studies (2008-2013), and is an associate faculty member of both the CRS and Nathanson Center at Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada. She is also an adjunct faculty associate at the Center for the Study of Human Rights Law, Bilgi University Faculty of Law since 2009, and Center for Human Rights Law at Bilkent University Faculty of Law since 2022. She is a member of the Turkish chapter of IVR (International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy). She is also the advisory board member of Lives in Dignity Grant Facility and the Western Minaret Organization.

In terms of innovative approaches to knowledge economies, Canefe is a practicing visual artist and mural painter with several exhibitions and installations in public spaces in Canada, Turkey, and Cyprus.  She is formally trained in theatre arts, stage décor and choral singing. Since 2017, she has been experimenting with the art/essay format in her academic publications.

Current Projects

• Statelessness as a Permanent State (Open Society Archives, Visegrad Fellowship)
• Ethics of Witnessing and Redefining Collective Responsibility (IWM visiting fellow, Vienna, Austria)
• Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies (IWM research fellow, Euro-Asia Platform, Vienna, Austria)

Fields of Research

• Global Politics of Dispossession
• Critical Forced Migration and Citizenship Studies
• Trauma, Memory, Atrocities of War and Societal Crimes
• Jurisprudential debates on International Criminal Law
• Nationalism and Mass Violence
• Theories of Justice and Debates on Collective Responsibility
• Politics and Ethics of Hope

Special Websites/Webarchives (all content and artwork belongs to Nergis Canefe)

Syrian Refugee Settlement in Canada, Working with Human Suffering Website Link , Reparations Website Link

Visiting Fellowship May 2024

Select Publications

Books

Canefe, Nergis. Sovereign Utopias: Politics of Dispossession in the Middle East (Lexington Books, under contract)

Canefe, Nergis. Crimes Against Humanity: The Limits of Universal Jurisdiction in the Global South. University of Wales Press, 2021.

Canefe, Nergis, ed. Transitional justice and forced migration: critical perspectives from the global south: critical perspectives from the global south. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Canefe, Nergis. The Syrian Exodus in Context: Crisis, Dispossession and Mobility in the Middle East. Istanbul Bigli University Press, 2018.

Canefe, Nergis, ed. The Jewish diaspora as a paradigm: Politics, religion and belonging. Libra Kitapçılık, 2014.

Canefe, Nergis. Anavatandan Yavruvatana Milliyetçilik, Bellek ve Aidiyet [Nationalism, Belonging and Memory from the ‘Motherland’ to its Extensions], çev. Cemil Boyraz ve Can Cemgil, Siyaset Bilimi 20 (2007).

Select Refereed Articles

Canefe, Nergis. “Gender, Dispossession, and Ethics of Witnessing: Method as Intervention.” In Gender, Identity and Migration in India, pp. 81-97. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2022.

Canefe, Nergis, Paula Banerjee, and Nasreen Chowdhory. “Gender, Identity and Displacement: Nexus Requirements for a Critical Epistemology.” In Gender, Identity and Migration in India, pp. 1-14. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2022.

Canefe, Nergis. “Afghanistan and its futures.” International Migration 60, no. 1 (2022): 262-267.

Canefe, Nergis. “Ethical Limits of Pandemic Governance.” Amicus Curae: The Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies (2022): 170.

Canefe, Nergis. “‘Do not go gentle into that good night’: the Anthropecene and the cyclical time of human suffering.” Globalizations 18, no. 6 (2021): 1058-1061.

Canefe, Nergis. “Drowning by Numbers.” Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage 1, no. 1 (2020): 33-64.

Canefe, Nergis. “New faces of statelessness: The Rohingya exodus and remapping of rights.” In Citizenship, Nationalism and Refugeehood of Rohingyas in Southern Asia, pp. 197-215. Springer, Singapore, 2020.

Canefe, Nergis. “Rethinking Displacement: Transitional Justice and Forced Migration Studies.” Mobilizing Global Knowledge (2019): 45.

Canefe, Nergis. “Borders, Citizenship and the Subaltern in South Asia.” In Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia, pp. 19-36. Springer, Singapore, 2019.

Canefe, Nergis. “Death of the Refugee: The Silence of Numbers.” In Migration, Refugees and Human Security in the Mediterranean and MENA, pp. 21-49. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018.

Canefe, Nergis. “Invisible lives: Gender, dispossession, and precarity amongst Syrian refugee women in the Middle East.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees/Refuge: revue canadienne sur les réfugiés 34, no. 1 (2018).

Canefe, Nergis. “Migration as a Necessity: Contextualising the European Response to the Syrian Exodus.” Refugee Watch 48 (2017).

Canefe, Nergis. “Hope, life and death: The Syrians are coming?[text].” Journal of Narrative Politics (2017).

Canefe, Nergis. “MEA CULPA, SUA CULPA, TUA MAXIMA CULPA: COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY AND LEGAL JUDGMENT.” Revista Direito UFMS 3, no. 1 (2017).

Canefe, Nergis. “Post-colonial state and violence: Rethinking Middle East and North Africa outside the blindfold of area studies.” Refugee Watch 45 (2016): 7-31.

Canefe, Nergis. “Management of irregular migration: Syrians in Turkey as paradigm shifters for forced migration studies.” New Perspectives on Turkey 54 (2016): 9-32.

Canefe, Nergis. “The making of “modern” diasporas: The case of Muslims in Canada.” Opportunity structures in diaspora relations: Comparisons in contemporary multilevel politics of diaspora and transnational identity (2007): 53-84.

Canefe, Nergis. “Inland Refugee Claimants.” Canada and the Middle East: In Theory and Practice (2007): 205.

Canefe, Nergis. “Refugees or enemies? The legacy of population displacements in contemporary Turkish Cypriot society.” South European Society and Politics 7, no. 3 (2002): 1-28.

Canefe, Nergis. “Turkish nationalism and ethno‐symbolic analysis: the rules of exception.” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 2 (2002): 133-155.

Canefe, Nergis. “The legacy of forced migrations in modern Turkish society: remembrance of the things past?.” Balkanologie. Revue d’études pluridisciplinaires 5, no. 1-2 (2001).

Art Exhibitions and Concerts

2023	Solo Exhibit, Mourning and Loss in Mare Nostrum, International Association of Memory Studies, Annual Congress, New Castle, UK
2022	Concert, Songs of Peace at a time of War, Senior Member of Shevchenko Chorus and Orchestra, Toronto, Canada
2020	Panel Installations on Life, Death and Beyond, Cyprus Modern Art Museum Acquisitions, Cyprus
2019	Solo Exhibit, The Road Less Travelled, McLaughlin Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada (cut outs and designs on the theme of dangerous voyages and displacement across the Mediterranean)
2017	Solo Exhibit, Silhouettes and Shadows, Cappadocia Arts Café, Avanos Cultural Center, Turkey (large size panels with mixed media and cut-out silhouettes)
2017	Solo Exhibit, The Language of Flowers, Sketches by Natural Ingredients, Istanbul Prince Islands Cultural Center Gallery, Turkey
2017	Permanent Exhibit of Line Drawings on the Syrian Exodus, Northwestern University, Center for Forced Migration Studies, Evanston, USA
2016	Solo Exhibit, Cappadocia Turkey, 10 silk panel installations on the theme of Fables and Truths (pieces permanently exhibited at the Anatolian Culture Museum, and Cappadocia History Museum), Turkey
2016	Solo Exhibit, Istanbul, Turkey, Mare Nostrum, Istanbul Prince Islands Cultural Center Gallery, Turkey
2016	Concert, Songs of Peace, Senior Member of the Shevchenko Chorus and Orchestra, Toronto, Canada