Home> Research> Research Staff> Dr Dawn Chatty

Dr Dawn Chatty
University Reader in
Anthropology and Forced Migration and Deputy Director

Tel: +44 (0)1865 281715
Email: dawn.chatty@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Dawn Chatty

Dawn Chatty is a social anthropologist whose ethnographic interests lie in the Middle East, particularly with nomadic pastoral tribes and refugee young people. Her research interests include a number of forced migration and development issues such as conservation-induced displacement, tribal resettlement, modern technology and social change, gender and development and the impact of prolonged conflict on refugee young people. She is both an academic anthropologist and a practitioner, having carefully developed her career in universities in the United States, Lebanon, Syria and Oman, as well as with a number of development agencies such as the UNDP, UNICEF, FAO and IFAD. After taking her undergraduate degree with honours at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), she took a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands. She returned to UCLA to take her PhD in Social Anthropology under the late Professor Hilda Kuper. She has come to Oxford from Oman, where she was Associate Professor of Anthropology at Sultan Qaboos University.

Following the award of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, Dr Chatty spent the period October 2005 - September 2007 researching and writing a manuscript on Dispossession and Forced Migration in the Middle East. The volume is in production at Cambridge University Press and provisionally titled Dispossession and Displacement  in the Modern Middle East.

Current Research Projects

Mobile peoples and conservation

Mobile peoples and the politics of oil

Dispossession and forced migration in the Middle East: community cohesion in an impermanent landscape

Improving access to and quality of reproductive and child health care to marginal peoples

Range enclosure on the Tibetan Plateau of China: impacts on pastoral livelihoods, marketing, livestock productivity and rangeland biodiversity

Sha’laan, Damascus: A French Mandate Quarter in Transition

Iraqi Refugees


Recent Publications


Books and Edited Volumes


Dispossession and Displacement in the Modern Middle East, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming 2010

Deterritorialized Youth: Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East. Edited. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Press, Forthcoming March, 2010

Dispossession and Forced Migration in the Middle East and North Africa. Edited with Bill Finalyson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming 2010.

Atfal Filastiin wa Al-Hijra:Al-‘Aish fi Zull al-Hijra al-Qasriyyah fi Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (Children of Palestine) Editor with G Hundt, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies and Arab Resource Collective, 2007

Nomadic societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century Editor, Leiden: Brill, 2006

Children of Palestine: experiencing forced migration in the Middle East Edited with G. Hundt, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2005

Participatory processes towards co-management of natural resources in pastoral areas of the Middle East: a training of trainers source book based on the principles of participatory methods and approaches With S. Baas and A. Fleig, Rome: FAO, 2004

Mobile peoples and conservation: an introduction Guest Editor, Special Issue of the Journal of Nomadic Peoples and supplement to the Journal of Biological Conservation, NP Vol. 7(1), BIOC Vol. 13(2), 2003

Alternative perceptions of authority and control: the desert and the Ma’moura of Syria Guest editor with R. Joubert. Special Edition of The Arab World Geographer, Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2002

Conservation and mobile indigenous peoples: displacement, forced settlement, and sustainable development. Edited with M. Colchester. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2002

Tanthiim Al-Nisa’: Al-Jamaa’aat al-Nisaiya al-Rasmiya wa Ghayr al-Rasmiya fii al-Sharaq al-Awsat.With A. Rabo (eds) Damascus: Al Mada Press, 2001

Organising women: informal and formal women’s groups in the Middle East. Edited with  A. Rabo.  Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997

Mobile Pastoralists: Development Planning and Social Change in Oman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996

 
Chapters, Articles and Papers

2009 Palestinian Refugee Youth: Agency and Aspiration. In Refugee Studies Quarterly , forthcoming

2009 Rituals of Royalty and the Elaboration of Ceremony in Oman: View from the Edge in International Journal of Middle East Studies (41) 1, 39-58.

Los Jovenes: Refugiados Palestinos, Revista De Análisis Y Debate Sobre Oriente Próximo Y El Meditarráneo. No. 2:53-64, 2009.

Report on the Conference: Forced Migration and Dispossession in the Middle East. Journal of the British Academy, Autumn, 2008.

Mobile Indigenous People (with Troy Sternberg), Forced Migration Review, issue 31 2008.

Researching refugee youth in the Middle East: reflections on the importance of comparative research Article in Journal of Refugee Studies, 19 (2), 2007

Mobile peoples: pastoralists and herders at the beginning of the 21st Century Article in Reviews in Anthropology, 36 (1), 2007

Tribal structures in the Badia of Syria: alternative perceptions of authority, management and control Chapter in B Dupret, Z Ghazzal and Y Courbage (eds) La Syrie Au Présent Paris: Actes Sud Sindbad, 2007

Adapting to biodiversity conservation: the mobile pastoral Harasiis Chapter in A Kapiszewski, A Al-Salmi and A Pikulski (eds) Modern Oman: Studies in Politics, Economy and Environment Wydawca: Kscagarnia Akademicka, 2006

Building schools for mobile people: the Harasiis in the Sultanate of Oman Chapter in The Education of Nomadic Peoples: Issues, Provision and Prospects, by C. Dyer (ed.) Oxford and New York: Berghahn Press, pp 213-231, 2006

Theoretical and methodological challenges of studying refugee children in the Middle East and North Africa: young Palestinian, Afghan and Sahrawi refugees Article with G. Crivello and G. Lewando Hundt in Journal of Refugee Studies 18 (4), pp.387-409, 2005

Introduction Chapter in Nomads of the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21 st Century, by D. Chatty (ed.), Leiden: Brill. 2006

Multinational oil exploitation and social investment: mobile pastoralists in the Sultanate of Oman Chapter in Nomads of the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21 st Century, by D. Chatty (ed.), Leiden: Brill. 2006

Assumptions of Degradation and Misuse: The Bedouin in the Syrian Badia Chapter in Nomads of the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21 st Century, by D. Chatty (ed.), Leiden: Brill. 2006

Advocating multi-disciplinarity in studying complex emergencies: the limitations of a psychological approach to understanding how young people cope with prolonged conflict in Gaza Article with G. Hundt, A. Thabet and H. Abuateya in Journal of Biosocial Science 36 (4): 417-31, 2004

Environmentalism in the Syrian Badia: the assumptions of degradation, protection and Bedouin misuse Chapter in Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege, by D. Anderson and E. Berglund (eds.). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2003

L’activité féminine en Oman: entre choix individual et contraintes culturelles Chapter in L’Oman Contemporain: État, Territoire, Identité, by M. Lavergne and B. Dumortier (eds.). Paris: Karthala Press, 2002

Disseminating findings from research with Palestinian children and adolescents Article in Forced Migration Review, Issue No. 15, pp. 40-43, 2002

Adapting to multinational oil exploration: the mobile pastoralists of Oman Paper in Mitteilungen des SFB Differenz und Integration: Nomadismus aus der Perspektiveder Begrifflichkeit. Centre for Oriental Studies (OWZ) of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, 2002

Animal reintroduction projects in the Middle East: conservation without a human face Chapter in Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development, D. Chatty and M. Colchester (eds.). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2002

Introduction: conservation and mobile peoples Chapter with M. Colchester in Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development, D. Chatty and M. Colchester (eds.). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2002

Harasiis marriage, divorce and companionship Chapter in Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East (revised edition), D. Bowen and E. Early (eds.). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001

Bedouin economics and the modern wage market: the case of the Harasiis of Oman Article in Nomadic Peoples, Vol. 4, Issue 2, June 2001

Integrating participation into research and consultancy: a conservation example from Arabia Article in Social Policy and Administration. Vol. 34, Issue 4, pp 408-418, December 2000

Reports and Other Publications

Palestinian refugees Encyclopaedia entry with Farah, R. in Migration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present Gibney, M. and Hansen, R. eds. Oxford and Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2005

Participatory processes towards co-management of natural resources in pastoral areas of the Middle East : A training of trainers source book with S. Baas and A. Fleig. Rome: FAO, 2004

Mobile peoples and conservation Guest editorial in Anthropology Today, Vol 18, Issue 4, pp.1-2, 2002