Centre for the Study of Coercion and Accountability - CECA

EU’s nye migrations- og asylpagt træder nu i kraft, og allerede den 24. juni samler vi eksperter til debat om, hvad det reelt kommer til at betyde.

Er pagten et fremskridt for et mere solidarisk asylsystem, eller er det primært strammere kontrol på bekostning af grundlæggende rettigheder?

Til seminaret sætter Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Cecilia Vejby Andersen, Maja Kathrine Rettrup Mørch og Ahlam Chemlali fokus på de juridiske gråzoner og humanitære dilemmaer, pagten skaber — for Europa og for Danmark. Modereret af Ida Marie Vammen. 

Seminaret afholdes på dansk den 24. juni kl. 16.00 på Aalborg Universitet i København.

Eventet er et samarbejde mellem CECA, DIIS og MOBILE KU.

Our Co-Director Ahlam Chemlali has been nominated to the prestigious KRAKA-Award 2026 for her PhD dissertation:  “Living and Dying in Transit: Violence, Bodies, and Survival in the Tunisian Borderlands”.

The committe writes in their nomination:

“Chemlali’s thesis is a powerful ethnographic work that examines life and death in transit in the Tunisian border areas under European migration control. With analytical precision and great empirical depth, it demonstrates how border externalization materializes in people’s bodies and everyday lives. The thesis connects the intimate and the geopolitical and provides insight into how violence, vulnerability and agency are shaped across these levels. At the same time, it contributes an important gendered and intersectional perspective on migration, highlighting the relationship between race, nationality and gender. The work distinguishes itself by giving voice to actors who are often marginalized and by making complex global processes present and sensuous.”

Read Chemlali’s PhD thesis here (or accessible in Instagram bio) 👉 https://lnkd.in/eQBCr-w2

The KRAKA Award honours innovative Danish gender research and will be awarded at the Danish Gender Research Conference on Friday 3 June 2026 at Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark.

What does it mean to study a city as “ordinary”?

Our co-directors Steffen Jensen and Ahlam Chemlali recently participated in Marseille, ville ordinaire ? Réalités urbaines et récits contre-hégémoniques - an interdisciplinary conference bringing together researchers working to develop new comparative, cross-institutional dialogues about 21st-century urban transformations.

At the conference, Prof. Steffen Jensen presented research on the representations of urban violence in Marseille and South Africa interrogating dominant narratives and proposing a more plural, relational framework grounded in empirical fieldwork. This work draws from the ERC-funded GANGS project with Professor Dennis Rodgers at MESOPOLHIS, Aix-Marseille University.

Co-Director Ahlam Chemlali will be a guest researcher and affiliate at MESOPOLHIS based at Aix-Marseille University and Sciences Po Aix for the summer, working on her new research project ‘Unpacking Mediterranean Borderlands’.

Read more here: https://confined-erc.eu/?page_id=6536 (link is also found in our Instagram bio)
ERC

CONGRATULATIONS to Ahlam Chemlali 🎉

We are incredibly proud to share that our Co-Director Ahlam Chemlali has been awarded this year’s Research Excellence Award by Nordjyllandsfonden - a prize of 500,000 DKK awarded to an outstanding young researcher.

The selection committee voted unanimously, across all disciplines and faculties, in recognition of Ahlam’s important work on European border externalisation and its human consequences. Her dissertation, ‘Living and Dying in Transit’, is a testament to what rigorous and courageous scholarship looks like.

We could not be more proud at CECA!

Well deserved, Ahlam ✨

INTERNSHIP OPEN CALL! CECA offers a limited number of internship positions for the autumn semester 2026. The programme is designed for ambitious master’s students seeking to engage with cutting-edge research at the intersection of anthropology, political science, criminology, and critical border studies. As a CECA intern you will be embedded in an active research environment, contribute to ongoing projects, and develop your analytical and academic skills under qualified supervision.

Internships are available within the following areas:
* Migration, borders, and externalization
* Violence, state power, and accountability
* Punishment, coercion, and detention

Please send a motivation letter (max 500 words), a CV, grade transcripts and documentation of internship requirements from your educational institution to [email protected] with the subject line CECA Internship Application – Autumn 2026. Link for more information in the comments.