My research focuses on how and why violence arises between different cultures, prompting either voluntary or forced migrations. I track all junctures of the migratory journey from crossing borders to being lost at sea and attend to when and how violence occurs along the migratory route. The way that the body in flight sustains injury and then either remembers or forgets it, has led me to study trauma and its relation to history as well as emotions and their cultural production. I’m also invested in discovering how violent political events play out in domestic spaces as well as how they impact different genders in different ways.

My PhD focused on the early decades of the Spanish Inquisition. It explored how that fearsome institution targeted women and drove many to migrate. I draw attention to continuities between how women experience migration in the present day, and how it was experienced in the late medieval period. Themes such as ‘radicalisation’, ‘border crossing’, and ‘promised land visions’ are all topics I cover in the research.