Prof Roza Tsagarousianou

Prof Roza Tsagarousianou

I am Professor of Media and Migration at the Westminster School of Media and Communications of the University of Westminster , The Project Leader of the HERA/CHANSE/UKRI funded project 'The Crisis of Migration Discourse: Towards a Participatory Lexicon of Migration' and the Research Co-Lead of the University of Westminster's  Diversity and Inclusion Research Community. 

I hold a BSc (Hons) with Distinction in Political Science and International Studies from Panteion University (Athens, Greece) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury.

I am a member of the CAMRI research centre, the Homelands research group and the Westminster University Migration Network.  I have also held the position of the Director of the CAMRI Doctoral Programme for a number of years, which I have worked to develop and expand. 

I have worked to establish the International Association's Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Diasporas and Media Working Group, and I was appointed as its convenor from 2004 to 2015. 

My most recent research project engages with the management of refugee populations across Europe. I am focusing on different understandings of rights, on border technologies of control, and on the politics of resistance to these. I am currently working on a Palgrave/Macmillan manuscript on the chronopolitics of Migration. For this, I am working through decolonial, racial capitalism, conceptual history, and gender studies to understand both the technologies of control of the time of the migrant as well as resistance to these. 

I have published extensively on diasporic cultures and politics, migration technologies of control, including space and time, and the development of biometric technologies,  diasporic media and audiences, and European Muslim cultures. 

My monographs include Diasporic Cultures and Globalization (Shaker 2007) and  Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave 2013). I  have co-edited a special issue of Javnost/The Public (2002:1) on the theme 'Diasporic Communications: Transnational & Local Cross-currents' and a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies on the theme of Rethinking Multiculturalism. I have co-edited Cyberdemocracy: Technologies, Cities and Civic Networks (Routledge 1997) and a co-edited anthology The Handbook of Diasporas, Media and Culture supported by the IAMCR and published by Wiley Blackwell (2019). My most recent publications focus on Time and the Border and biometrics and control at the borders of Europe. 

I am interested in supervising doctoral research in the following areas: globalization and transnational cultural flows; migration and mobility, diasporic media and cultural politics; multiculturalism (theory and policy); information and communication technologies and social/political identity formation, democracy, and everyday life, European Muslim audiences and cultures.


Sustainable Development Goals
In brief

Research areas

My research lies at the intersection of migration, media, culture and politics, with a particular focus on diaspora, transnational communication, border regimes and the mediation of mobility and belonging. My work engages critically with questions of power, representation and governance, drawing on decolonial and critical theory. I have led and contributed to several international research projects on migration and communication and have published widely in leading journals and edited volumes on media, migration, and social change.I am the Project Lead of a large HERA/CHANSE/UKRI grant on 'The Crisis of Migration Discourse: Towards a Participatory Lexicon of Migration'. We work across five European countries (UK, Denmark, Italy, France and Spain) to establish the current hegemonic Lexicon on Migration and following this, to work with asylum seekers and refugees to co-author a new, Just, Lexicon of Migration. In addition to managing the HERA/CHANSE/UKRI funded project on 'The Crisis of Migration Discourse', I am currently working on a Palgrave McMillan manuscript on 'The Time of the Other: Migration, Borders and the Politics of Time' which engages with data collected via ethnographic research with immobilised migrants in the Kara Tepe and Moria refugee camps in the Island of Lesvos, Greece. One of the most important themes that spans my work, is a critical engagement with current challenges and denial of human rights established in international law by current systems of migration management across Europe and beyond. I am also currently developing work on the use of Kosseleck's understanding of 'historical time' as both a mechanism of migration management and control, as well as of resistance. I have published extensively on electronic democracy, migration, diasporic media and audiences and European Muslim cultures.

Skills / expertise

I am the Research Co- Lead of the University of Westminster's Diversity and Inclusion Research Community that works across schools and disciplines to promote and develop research in the areas of diversity, inclusion and social justice.

Supervision interests

migration, borders, human rights, biometric technologies and the digitalization of refugees at the borders of Europe, Migration and the politics of Time and Diasporas, identity and digital technologies