Teaching and collaborative learning are integral to Elena’s work on displacement, humanitarianism, ethics and knowledge production. Her teaching brings critical scholarship into conversation with the experiences, perspectives and knowledge of students, researchers, creatives, practitioners and communities working across different contexts.

A central concern is how knowledge about displacement is produced, whose knowledge is recognised, how people and places are represented, and what ethical responsibilities accompany research, storytelling and humanitarian action.

Teaching Areas

Migration and Refugee Studies

Critical approaches to migration and refugee studies, including refugee-host relations, protracted displacement, refugee responses, South-South encounters and the concepts and categories through which displacement is understood.

Humanitarianism, Protection and Response

Humanitarian action in contexts of conflict, displacement and siege; protection, access and accountability; humanitarian ethics; and the relationships between humanitarian, political and legal responses.

Storytelling, Narrative and Representation

How stories about displacement are produced, circulated and contested; questions of voice, visibility and silence; ethical storytelling and narrative justice; and the ways narratives and representations shape public understandings of displacement.

Research Ethics and Ethical Practice

Ethical relationships in displacement research, including questions of responsibility, consent, participation, representation, reciprocity and power. Particular attention is given to the ethical challenges that arise when undertaking research in contexts shaped by displacement, conflict and inequality.

Refugee-led, Participatory and Collaborative Research

Approaches that recognise refugees and communities as researchers, theorists and producers of knowledge. Teaching explores participation, collaboration and reciprocity alongside questions about how authority, resources and recognition are distributed within research relationships.

Southern and Refugee-centred Knowledge Production

The inequalities and hierarchies that shape whose concepts, theories and knowledge are recognised within migration and refugee studies. This includes Southern approaches to displacement, refugee-produced knowledge and the possibilities of more plural and equitable forms of knowledge production.

Gender, Care and Displacement

Gendered experiences of displacement and response; care and responsibility; intersectionality; and the ways gender and other relationships of power shape knowledge, representation and humanitarian encounters.

Creative and Collaborative Ways of Knowing

Poetry, photography, oral history and storytelling as forms of inquiry and knowledge production rather than simply illustrations of research. Teaching considers their intellectual possibilities alongside questions of ethics, representation, collaboration and responsibility.

Workshops and Collaborative Learning

Elena develops workshops and collaborative learning sessions for universities, research groups, humanitarian and civil-society organisations, and interdisciplinary networks.

Workshops can be designed around a particular intellectual, methodological, ethical or strategic challenge and combine critical reflection with collaborative discussion and analysis. Topics can include:

• Ethical storytelling and the representation of displacement

• Research ethics and ethical decision-making

• Refugee-led and participatory research

• Narrative, discourse and power

• Creative and collaborative research methods

• Southern and refugee-centred knowledge production

• Humanitarianism, protection and accountability

• Gender, care and displacement

• Universities, sanctuary and responses to displacement

• Developing interdisciplinary research agendas

International and Collaborative Education

Elena’s educational work extends beyond individual courses and classrooms to international partnership-building, collaborative curriculum development and interdisciplinary exchange. Her approach treats international education as a space for reciprocal intellectual exchange and collaborative knowledge production, creating connections between students, researchers, educators and institutions across different contexts.

Teaching and Workshop Enquiries

Elena welcomes invitations to contribute to guest teaching, workshops, masterclasses, doctoral and early-career researcher development, and collaborative learning programmes.

Sessions can be developed around particular research, methodological, ethical or strategic questions and adapted to academic, humanitarian, policy and civil-society contexts.

For teaching and workshop enquiries, please get in touch →