Laura Ogden (L.J.)
I am an Assistant Professor in the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development research program at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. My research focuses on the transnational mobility, education and kinship of migrant youth between West Africa and Europe.
I am an anthropologist focused on transnational mobility, education, and kinship with a specialisation in multimodal and audiovisual ethnography.
My current research explores various facets of transnational migrant youth's lives between West Africa and Europe, including transnational sibling relationships (intra-generational kinship) in migrant families, secondary and tertiary educational trajectories, and the role of digital media in young people's mobility experiences. I explore these questions using multimodal/ audiovisual, multi-sited, and participatory ethnographic methods.
My PhD and postdoctoral research explored the patterns, experiences and effects of the transnational mobility of young people with a migration background between Ghana and Germany, as part of the ERC-funded MO-TRAYL project.
My MA in Cultural Anthropology and Visual Ethnography (Leiden University, 2016) investigated how the 2013 Timorese primary-school curriculum reform - on which I also worked as a consultant editor - navigated and highlighted tensions between the educational ideals of various local and international stakeholders. I produced the ethnographic film Scripting Change as part of my thesis.
My other qualifications span Sociology, Spanish and Latin American Studies, Cross-Disciplinary Art and Design, and Copyediting.
I previously worked in international development in Timor-Leste (East Timor) with government, NGOs and international donors (2011-2017) and in the arts sector in Melbourne, Australia (2008-2011), as a public art and youth studio coordinator.
I have lived in Australia, Mexico, Timor-Leste, the Netherlands, and Germany, and I speak English, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Tetun (the lingua franca of Timor-Leste).
