Nafisa Abdulhamid
PhD
Dr. Nafisa A. Abdulhamid is the Network Coordinator for the Research Network on Women, Peace and Security (RN-WPS). She completed her PhD at Dalhousie University where she examined the extent to which civilian protection norms have been sustained, adapted, and localization in the African Union and within the African Union Mission in Somalia. Nafisa hopes to conduct research in meaningful ways that will continue to tell the untold, and often forgotten, stories of individuals and communities so that her findings can positively impact policy changes on intervention practices that will actually protect civilians. As such, she has published several books and articles on human security, gender and development, and civilian protection. Her most recent publications include “Commercialized Micro-Credit: How Micro-Borrowing Betrayed the Poor” (2019); “Disruptive Technology, Mobile Money and Financial Mobilization in Africa: MPesa as Kenya’s Solution to Global Financial Exclusion?” (2020); and “Offshoring in the pandemic age: Europe and the reconfiguration of externalized border controls” (2021). Nafisa also holds a Bachelor of Arts (honors) and a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Alberta. Despite being professionally rooted in Canada, Nafisa maintains strong connections with her community in Mombasa, Kenya.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Humanitarian intervention, Rise of Salafi-jihadist organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, Gender and Development, Approaches to Development in the Global South (specifically Micro-Finance).
PUBLICATIONS
Abdulhamid, Nafisa. “The Islamic State in Context: A Historical and Postcolonial Approach to Understanding its Emergence in Iraq and Syria.” Education and Research Archive: University of Alberta Libraries. 2017. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/cpg15bf35s
Abdulhamid, Nafisa. “The Securitization of Migration in the European Union.” Potentia, October 2018. (forthcoming)
CONFERENCE PAPERS
Abdulhamid, Nafisa. “The Islamic State in Context: A Postcolonial Approach to Understanding its Emergence in Iraq and Syria.” MA thesis. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. May 2017.
Presenter, “Lessons from Libya: Questioning our Responsibility to Protect,” Canada 150: View from the Margins, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. March 2017.
Presenter, “Muslims, Islam, and the Media,” International Week, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. February 2015.
Public Lecture “Operation Iraqi Freedom: Implications of the War on Terror on Iraqi Civil Society,” Political Science. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. June 2016.
Presenter, “Rethinking Female Suicide Terrorism,” Feminisms in Fast Forward: Gender and Politics in ‘Queer Times,’” University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. March 2016.