Biography

Dr Caitlin Procter’s current research focusses on the impact of protracted conflict, violence and displacement on young people in the Middle East. She earned her DPhil (PhD) in International Development at St Antony’s College, the University of Oxford in March 2019. Funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council, her doctoral research in the occupied Palestinian territories studied the ways young refugees make decisions about their futures under severe political constraints, specifically considering choices around education, livelihoods, and migration. During the 2018/19 academic year, Caitlin was a research fellow at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, where she began postdoctoral field research investigating the political economy of irregular migration among Palestinian refugee youth in Gaza, for which she completed eight months of ethnographic fieldwork. Caitlin will spend the academic year 2019/20 working on her book manuscript, provisionally titled, ‘Precarious Politics: the migration networks and trajectories of Palestinian refugee youth from Gaza to Europe’.

Caitlin earned her MA with distinction in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is completing a Diploma in International Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham. Caitlin is the co-founder of an online project on ethnographic research methods, The New Ethnographer, and is finalizing a research methods book manuscript titled The New Ethnographer: Contemporary Challenges in Ethnographic Research. Committed to applying academic research to the humanitarian sector, she has worked extensively as a consultant and advisor with UNHCR, UNRWA, UNICEF and multiple NGOs in the Middle East. Her working languages are English, French and Arabic.

Caitlin has experience in teaching at MA level in research methods; and theoretical approaches to Social Anthropology.