Amanda Lubit is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. She positions her research at the intersection of the anthropology of migration and the anthropology of violence. Her research interests lie in gendered and embodied aspects of social suffering, violence, repression, and racism among women migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in urban contexts. Her doctoral dissertation is based upon a two-year ethnography with Muslim women living in post-conflict Belfast, Northern Ireland during Brexit. It explores the social suffering produced by immigration regimes including the impacts of structural violence, racism, and hate crime on the bodies, visibility, and movement of religious and racial minorities. It also examines creative ways women challenge and resist these restrictions to make a place for themselves.

Amanda’s work has already had practical and policy implication, promoting ways to address gendered and racial inequities. She contributed to a judicial review of hate crime legislation in Northern Ireland and created commissioned reports for a local minority-led think tank to engage with policymakers in addressing racism, hate crime, and discrimination in health, housing, and education. She also has an upcoming publication in the Journal of Intercultural Studies on the conflicting temporalities of refugee mothers living separated from children and other family. She has also been the reviews editor for the Irish Journal of Anthropology since 2020 and co-edited a recent special issue for that journal.

Amanda previously earned a master’s degree in anthropology (Portland State University), a master’s degree in public health (Tufts University), and a graduate certificate in refugee trauma (Harvard University). She also spent five years working with public service agencies, policymakers and community organizations at the local, federal and international level on HIV/AIDS, homelessness, pandemics, disaster, food security and displacement.