Behind the Scenes

Before becoming an academic, Nisrin Elamin worked as an educator, researcher and advocate for various community-based organizations including Grassroots International and African Communities Together, an organization of African immigrants fighting for civil rights, opportunity, and a better life for communities they belong to. Nisrin is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University in 2020. Her research explores the relationship between land, belonging, migration and geopolitics in Sudan and the greater Sahel region. Her PhD thesis examined the ways landless and landholding communities are negotiating and contesting changes in land ownership prompted by a recent wave of Gulf Arab corporate investments in Sudanese land. Nisrin’s writing on migration and current affairs in Sudan, has appeared in Al Jazeera, the Washington Post, OkayAfrica and the Egypt Independent.