Profile
Alexander Ephrussi

Alexander Ephrussi

PhD Researcher in Anthropology and Sociology
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Spoken languages
French, English, German, Dari, Turkish, Icelandic

PhD Thesis

 

Title: In the Light and Shade of Movement: Power, Affect and (In)Visibility in times of Deportation in Turkey

PhD Supervisor: Alessandro Monsutti and Umut Yildirim

Expected completion date: 2025

Alexander Ephrussi’s doctoral thesis investigates the powers of political exclusion and deportation in the context of migration, as well as the modes of resistance that migrants develop in the absence of legal protection. The thesis focuses on the case of Afghan migrants in Turkey, which sheds light on a wide array of exclusionary powers and the reverberations of past violences affecting migrants today, altogether complicating classical analyses that frame exclusion as merely a question of the migrant/non-migrant or citizen/non-citizen divide. By examining how Afghans—particularly Uzbek and Turkmen Afghans—in Turkey understand and navigate their position within the national and transnational context of Istanbul, the dissertation analyzes the intertwined logics through which (il)legitimate presences are defined, ascribed, performed, and disciplined.
 

Profile
 

Alexander Ephrussi is a doctoral student at the Graduate Institute, Geneva since September 2021. From 2022 until 2023 he was a guest researcher at the Galatasaray University of Istanbul. He holds a master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University College London acquired in 2018 with a thesis in anthropology of migration about Afghan migrations to Germany since 2015. He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Oxford in 2016, reading anthropology and archaeology.
 

Research Interests
 

  • Migration and Border Regimes
  • Visibility and Invisibility 
  • Performativity
     

Academic Work experience
 

  • Teaching Assistant at the Graduate Institute, Geneva since September 2024.
  • Research Assistant at Université de Genève for Dr. Nataliya Tchermalykh from January 2021 until October 2022.
     

Fellowships, Grants and Awards
 

  • Swiss Government Exellence Scholarship (FCS) 2021-2024
  • Sekforde Trust Scholarship 2017
  • Donald Fergusson Award 2015
     

Publications and Works
 

  • Ephrussi, Alexander (2023) ‘Give a Hand to the Fallen, as Long as You Are Standing: Earthquake Disaster Relief among Afghans’. June 2023. Allegra Lab.