Dr Nafhesa Ali

Nafhesa is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminology and co-lead of the Race and Migration IDRT at Northumbria University.

She is an interdisciplinary sociologist with expertise in migration and the everyday lives of racialised and minority communities. Her research promotes inclusive and participatory approaches, with a particular focus on decolonising methodological practices and pedagogy through creative methodologies. 

Teaching and Learning

Nafhesa is committed to developing inclusive and decolonial approaches to teaching and learning. She is a Module Lead and Personal Tutor and co-developed Race, Rights and Resistance: Global Perspectives on Migration and Justice, a module that brings together critical perspectives on race, migration, rights, inequality and social justice from global and interdisciplinary perspectives. Her teaching and curriculum development reflect her wider commitment to challenging Eurocentric approaches to knowledge production and creating learning environments that centre diverse experiences, perspectives and forms of knowledge.

Academic Leadership and Research Development

Alongside her teaching, Nafhesa contributes to academic leadership and research development at Northumbria University. Nafhesa founded and co-leads the Race and Migration IDRT and is a founding member of the Power and Intersecting Inequalities (PII) Research Group at Northumbria. She previously served as the Social Sciences Department Peer Reviewer and Bidding Lead, contributing to research development, peer review and the development of funding opportunities within the department. These roles complement her commitment to strengthening interdisciplinary research cultures and supporting colleagues in developing innovative and impactful research.

Research and Publications

Nafhesa is a Co-Investigator on the Leverhulme-funded Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability (TIES) project and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Manchester. Before joining Northumbria University, Nafhesa held academic roles at the University of Sheffield, Huddersfield, and Royal Holloway, University of London, and prior to academia worked in the NHS. At Sheffield, Nafhesa was a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) on the AHRC-funded Storying Relationships.

Nafhesa completed her PhD in 2015. Her monograph, based on her doctoral research, Older South Asian Women’s Experiences of Ageing in the UK: Intersectional Feminist Perspectives, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024.

Her recent publications include a 2026 article in AREA that develops and applies a framework for understanding Transnational Climate Anxiety, representing the first paper to conceptualise transnational perspectives of climate anxiety. She is a co-author of the forthcoming Unsettling Sustainability: Environmental Politics, Everyday Practices and Translocal Lives (2026), co-authored Storying Relationships: Young British Muslims Speak and Write about Sex and Love (2021) and co-editor of A Match Made in Heaven: British Muslim Women Write about Love and Desire (2020). Nafhesa has journal publications in Sexualities, Ethnicities, Ethnic and Racial Studies and Cultural Geographies.

Engagement and Participation

Nafhesa is a Learning Hub Facilitator for the North East Anti-Racism Coalition (NEARC), having previously served as Chair of NEARC’s Research Steering Group. She is also a UNESCO Policy Advisor and has been a member of the British Academy Net Zero Reference Group. Through this work, Nafhesa is committed to advancing socially engaged, inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches that challenge structural inequalities and contribute to more equitable forms of knowledge production, education and research.

PhD Supervision

Nafhesa welcomes expressions of interest from prospective PhD students whose research interests align with her expertise, particularly projects exploring race, migration and the everyday lives and experiences of racialised and minority communities. She is especially interested in supporting interdisciplinary, participatory and creative research that engages critically with questions of belonging, identity, inequality, representation and social justice.