Hanno Brankamp

Hanno Brankamp is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre. He holds a BA from Humboldt University of Berlin, a Master’s Degree from the University of St Andrews, and a DPhil from the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis explored the intersection of policing and humanitarian governance in Kenyan refugee camps. He previously was Lecturer in Human Geography at King’s College London (KCL).

Hanno’s research interests include the geographies of im/mobility and forced migration, humanitarianism, carceral geographies, the spatialities of camps, police and state violence, ethnographic research, displacement in Kenya and (East) Africa, and abolitionist politics. He is currently co-coordinator for the Africa Research Group in the German Network of Forced Migration Studies (Netzwerk Fluchtforschung) and member of the editorial board of their blog (https://blog.fluchtforschung.net). Hanno has previously worked as a graduate attaché for the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in Nairobi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania, and for Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES) in Amman, Jordan.

Hanno’s work has been published in Political Geography, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Migration & Society, Forced Migration Review, The Routledge Encyclopaedia of African Studies, and media outlets such as The Guardian, Open Democracy, Africa Is A Country, African Arguments, Democracy In Africa, Afrika Süd and the social justice platform Pambazuka. He is currently co-editing two special issues: one in the journal Area exploring ‘Camp Methodologies’ and another in Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees focusing on ‘Humanizing Studies of Refuge and Displacement’. 

Research interests: Humanitarian violence; carceral geographies; camps; abolition; coloniality; critical ethnography; policing; East Africa; Kenya

Twitter: @HannoBrankamp