Dr Francesca Meloni is a critical migration scholar with training in anthropology. She completed her PhD at McGill University, Montreal, Canada in 2014. Before joining King's College London, she worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford and UCL and she was Lecturer at Humboldt University, in Berlin, and Northumbria University.

Research

Francesca's research focuses on the migration-citizenship nexus and the intersections between social policy, race and age.

Francesca has a background in anthropology and extensive experience conducting ethnographic and participatory research in migration contexts. Her work is interdisciplinary, at the crossroads of anthropology, sociology, and public policy.

She has experience of conducting collaborative research on: undocumented young people and social belonging; access to healthcare and education for undocumented migrants; unaccompanied minors and transitions into institutional adulthood; datafication and bordering in welfare services; the ethics of decolonial and participatory research.

She has published in major journals in social sciences. Her book Ways of Belonging: Undocumented Youth in the Shadow of Illegality, published by Rutgers University Press, examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K–12 schools in Canada and are rendered invisible to the education system. The book won the Hart–SLSA Prize for Early Career Academics, awarded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

Her research interests include:

• Migration, rights and citizenship
• Undocumented immigration and experiences of illegality
• Migrant young people, children and families
• Access to healthcare and education for migrants
• Datafication and data-sharing in public services
• Ethics and participatory research approaches

Teaching

• Principles and Methods for Social Research (BA Social Sciences)
• Global Childhoods (MA International Child Studies)

Francesca is Deputy Director of the MA International Child Rights and Development.

PhD supervision

Francesca is happy to supervise students in the following areas: migration, race and ethnicity; young people, citizenship and belonging; access to welfare services; datafication and migration/bordering; childhood and ethics; participatory research approaches.

You can find out more about Francesca on her PURE research profile.