dr. M.C. Wilson (Catherina)

I am an ethnographer and mobility scholar and in my work I combine elements from anthropology, history, sociolinguistics and human geography. I have research experience in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR) and Tanzania. With a background in African Studies, I completed my PhD at the Institute for History at the Leiden University as part of the “Connecting In Times of Duress” project. Based on biographical stories, my dissertation focussed on the nexus of mobility and conflict between in Central Africa. From 2016 to 2018, I took part in a project at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) on the demobilization of children and youth in the CAR entitled "Being young in times of conflict in the Central African Republic". From 2019 to 2022, under the “Transnational Figurations of Displacement” (TRAFIG) project, and together with DIGNITY Kwanza (a Tanzanian NGO), I looked at the mobility and connectivity among Congolese and Burundian refugees in urban Tanzania.

Within the Radboud’s University Network on Migrant Inclusion (RUNOMI), I work as an Assistant Professor in “Digitalization in the Era of Displacement” at the department of Geography, Planning and Environment. Within the “Mobility Edges” project, I investigate contemporary migrants’ mobility and the social connectivity between Central Africa and Latin America. Rooted in historical genealogies of mobility between the two continents, my hope is to establish an intercontinental dialogue focusing on how cultural practices, including their digitalization, help people to create dignified living spaces. Additionally, I am particularly interested in exploring the interconnection of different ways of producing knowledge (with partners from within and outside university) as well as in decolonial practices in teaching and research.