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Kristin V. Monroe

Research Interests:
urban anthropology
mobility and migration studies
the state
militarism
security
Middle East
Education

Ph.D., Stanford University, 2009

Research

Kristin V. Monroe, PhD., is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Islamic Studies Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research has focused on experiences of mobility, political violence, and citizenship in Beirut, Lebanon in both historical and contemporary eras. In her book, The Insecure City: Space, Mobility, and Power (Rutgers University Press, 2016) she makes an important contribution to urban anthropology by showing how practices of spatial mobility in the city do more than simply reflect social differences, but are also a means through which an uneven and insecure urban citizenship is produced. A Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation supported Dr. Monroe in writing the book which was selected for inclusion in the Knowledge Unlatched open access program. She served as a Visiting Research Scholar with the Islamic Bioethics Project at Georgetown University in Qatar from 2017-2018 and published findings from this research in a book chapter “Reproductive Technologies in Muslim Contexts” in the Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives (Springer, 2019). Dr. Monroe’s current research, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, explores manhood, labor, and migration across the Syrian warscape.

Courses Taught and Teaching Interests
  • ANT 103 Sports, Culture & Society
  • ANT 338 Economic Anthropology
  • ANT 222 Middle East Cultures
  • ANT 601 Theories and Concepts in Anthropology
  • ANT 302 Ethnographic Research Methods

 

Selected Publications:

         The Insecure City: Space, Power, and Mobility in Beirut (Rutgers University Press, 2016)

  • 2023 Driving across the Warscape: Syrian Cross-border Taxi Drivers and the Politics of Mobility. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. 41(7): 1374-1390.
  • 2020 Masculinity, Migration, and Forced Conscription in the Syrian War. Cultural Anthropology. 35(2):264-289. https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/4073/542
  • 2020 Geopolitics, Nationalism, and 'Buying Local' in Qatar's Desert. CAFE: Culture, Food, Agriculture and Environment. 42(1):1-11. 
  • 2017 Tweets of Surveillance: Traffic, Twitter, and Securitization in Beirut, Lebanon. Anthropological Theory. 17(3):322-337.
  • 2017 Circulation, Modernity, and Urban Space in 1960s Beirut. History and Anthropology. 28(2):188-210.
  • 2016 Exploring Nature, Making the Nation: The Spatial Politics of Ecotourism in Lebanon. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 39(1):64-78. 
  • 2014 Automobility and Citizenship in Interwar Lebanon. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. 34(3):518-531.
  • 2014 Labor and the Urban Landscape: Mobility, Risk, and Possibility among Syrian Delivery Workers in Beirut. Anthropology of Work Review 35(2):84-94.
  • 2011 Being Mobile in Beirut. City & Society 23(1):94-111.