IDRT Leads

Nafhesa Ali is an Assistant Professor in Criminology and Sociology at Northumbria University and Lead for the Race and Migration Research IDRT. Nafhesa expertise sits at the intersection of everyday lives, migration, British Muslim experiences, storytelling, environmental sustainability and examining whiteness, policy and practice. Nafhesa’s book publications include Older South Asian Women’s Experiences of Ageing in the UK: Intersectional Feminist Perspectives (2024), Asian Voices: First Generation Migrants (2010), edited collections Storying Relationships (2021) and A Match Made in Heaven: British Muslim Women write about Love and Desire (2020). Nafhesa’s recent publication in the journal Area ‘Transnational Climate Anxiety: Situating a Relational Socio-Spatial Framework for the Emotional Responses to Climate Change (2026) shares a new framework to understand transnational climate emotions lived and experienced in the present. Nafhesa has journal publications in Policy Studies, Local Environment, Sexualities, Ethnicities, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Nafhesa’s is also a Learning Hub Facilitator for the North East Anti-Racism Coalition (NEARC) and NEARC’s Research Steering Group Chair. Nafhesa’a ambitions are to create a bridge between academia, policy, community engagement and creative public scholarship.

Edward Anderson is an Assistant Professor in History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Northumbria University. From 2025 to 2027 he is also a Senior Fellow in the South Asia Institute at SOAS, University of London. From 2015 to 2019, he was the Smuts Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. He has also been a Teaching Associate at the Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies, and a Postdoctoral Affiliate at Trinity College. Edward has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and the University of Mumbai, and a Visiting Professor at the International institute of Migration and Development in Kerala. Dr Anderson’s research relates to Indian politics and contemporary history, diasporas and migration, transnational networks, activism and resistance, multiculturalism, and the politics of the Indian diaspora. In 2024 he published Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Penguin/Hurst/Oxford University Press). 

Gwyneth Lonergan is an Assistant Professor in Criminology and Sociology.  Her research focuses on migration, borders, and citizenship, especially as these relate to biological and social reproduction.  She examines how discourses and policies around belonging, citizenship, and migration are experienced by individuals in their everyday lives, and in their decision-making and activities around reproduction. Originally from Canada, she was awarded her PhD by the University of Manchester in 2016, and previously worked at the University of Sheffield, and as a Wellcome Fellow in Social Science and Bioethics at Lancaster University, before joining Northumbria University in 2022.   Her first book, Borders, Pregnancy, and Citizenship: Migrant women’s experiences of pregnancy and maternity care in the UK, was published by Bristol University Press in 2025.  Gwyneth is also a member of the editorial board of Sociological Research Online.  She is actively involved knowledge exchange with policy makers and practitioners in areas including migration and maternity care.