Caitlin Procter

Part-time Professor
Caitlin Procter is a part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre. She is a political anthropologist and conducts research on childhood and youth, conflict, forced migration, in the Middle East and in Europe. She has conducted field research in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and has recently started working on Italy. At the MPC, she works on the protection of irregular migrants in Europe, with a focus on the work conditions and family lives. Caitlin is also a Marie SkƂodowska Curie Research Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute, where her research explores the return and reintegration of children and youth in Northeast Syria and in Tunisia.

Caitlin received her DPhil from the University of Oxford in International Development 2019, and her book based on her doctoral research – an ethnography of the political practices of refugee youth in East Jerusalem, titled Beyond the State – is currently under review with Cambridge University Press. Her second book project, on coerced migration among youth from Gaza to Europe is based on research conducted as a Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University in 2019 and as a Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow at the EUI in 2020.

Caitlin has taught qualitative research methods and ethics at the EUI, and is co-editor of the textbook Inclusive Ethnography: Making fieldwork safer, healthier and more ethical, published by SAGE (2024).

Caitlin has extensive experience as a consultant and advisor to UNRWA, UNHCR, UNICEF, Save the Children, the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and to European diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

Core discipline: anthropology.

Books and special issues of academic journals

Procter, C. and Spector, B. (eds.) 2024. Inclusive Ethnography: Making fieldwork safer, healthier and more ethical. London: SAGE.

Journal articles

Procter, C., Hart, J., Al-Rozzi, M., and Pontalti, K. 2023. ‘Conceptualising and Challenging Child Neglect in Humanitarian Action:   Protecting Displaced Children in Jordan and Palestine’. Child Abuse and Neglect (publication 2023 forthcoming) 

Procter, C. 2022.’Refugee Status, Permanent Residency and Citizenship: the re-making of categories among Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem. Journal of Refugee Studies 36:1 (65-83)

Procter, C. 2021. ‘Co-ordinated mobility: disrupting narratives of convergence in the irregular migration of youth from the Gaza Strip. Public Anthropologist 3:1 (93-110).

Book chapters

Procter, C. 2023. ‘”In Gaza there is no tomorrow”: youth participation in Gaza’s Great March of Return”. In Bocco, R. and Said, I. De-colonising the Question of Palestine, IHEID Geneva.

Procter, C. 2022. ‘In search of protection: Irregular mobility among Palestinian youth in Gaza’. In Achilli, L(ed) Global Human Smuggling: Creativity, Control and Complexity in Unauthorized Mobility, John Hopkins University Press.

Research and policy reports

Hart, J., Procter, C., Al-Rozzi, M. 2022. ‘Neglect and Protection of Refugee Children: a report on research in Jordan and the Gaza Strip, Palestine’. Bath: University of Bath.

Hart, J., Procter, C., Al-Rozzi, M et al. 2021. ‘COVID-19 in the Gaza Strip : Community Perspectives on the Pandemic’. London: ELRHA.

Al-Rozzi, M., Procter, C. and Torsein, C. 2020. ‘Detention of children engaged in armed struggle in East Jerusalem: safeguarding child rights’. 2020. East Jerusalem: UNICEF.

Procter, C. 2020. ‘Improving living conditions in the Palestinian gatherings in Lebanon: towards more comprehensive and sustainable solutions. 2020. Beirut: The Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies and UNDP.

Abdulkhaliq, N., Bitar, K. and Procter, C. 2020. ‘Palestinian refugees from Syria in Lebanon: Protection and Livelihoods’. 2020. Amman: UNRWA.

Procter, C. and Liew, Z. 2020. ‘Child focused recovery from armed conflict: towards a new approach’. London: Save the Children UK.

Hanley, T., Procter, C. and Ogwang, K. 2018. ‘Sexual and Gender Based Violence in protracted displacement: prevention and response among Syrian refugees in Lebanon’. Geneva: UNHCR.

Blog posts and media

‘Gaza conflict: how children’s lives are affected on every level’. The Conversation. 17.10.2023

‘What gives Israel the right to annihilate Gaza? Suggesting both sides are to blame is not a defensible position’. With Luigi Achilli. Open Democracy 30.10.2023.

‘Coerced innovation: Gaza makes its own tools to fight against COVID-19’. Open Democracy. 16.04.2020

‘When Palestinians tell you Israeli Apartheid is real, listen: Palestinian responses to Peace to Prosperity’. Middle East Directions, EUI. 15.02.2020

‘The future of Jerusalem: Trump’s Peace Plan (2)’. Middle East Directions, EUI. 10.02.2020

‘The “Problem” of Gaza: Trump’s Peace Plan (1)’. Middle East Directions, EUI. 05.02.2020

‘A return to targeted assassinations in Gaza’. Middle East Directions, EUI. 12.11.2019