PhD Thesis

Title: Cyber-Hobos, Nomadic Statecraft, and Diasporic Rhizomes: Tracing the Emergent Topologies of Kinopolitical Liminality in post-Disaster Puerto Rico (2017-2023)

PhD Supervisor: Anna Leander (IHEID), Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary University of London)

Expected completion date: 2026

Profile
 

Franca is a doctoral student at the International Relations and Political Science Department at the Graduate Institute, and visiting scholar at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY, NYC (Research Fellow). She holds a Master in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute and a Bachelor in Political Science from the Free University Berlin. Her academic interests lie at the intersection between International Political Sociology, Critical Security, Disaster, and Mobility Studies. More specifically, her research focuses on disaster migration and governance, the relationship between neo-nomadic mobility and execution of statecraft in Small Island Developing States, and the politics of resilience in the Anthropocene. Her dissertation combines dynamic network analysis with critical counter mapping techniques to contrast the post-Hurricane movement patterns of hypermobile kinetic elites with those of the Puerto Rican population between 2017-2023.
 

Research Interests
 

• Disaster migration and governance 
• Climate segregation and related mobility inequalities 
• Statehood and statecraft in the Anthropocene 
• Neo-nomadism: hypermobility, and non-residency in an era of climate displacement and managed retreat 
• ‘Kinopolitics’, ‘Nomadology’ and the primacy of motion in the study of International Relations 
• Development of methods for the study of dynamic, and complex, multi-level phenomena: Dynamic Network Analysis, Critical Counter Mapping Techniques
• Theoretical and methodological advancements in the study of motion phenomenology 
   

Other Work Experience
 

• Teaching Assistant I Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (2022 - today) 
• Commissioning Editor I E-International Relations (2021-2023) 
• Research Assistant I International Relations/Political Science Department (2021) 
• Research Assistant I Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), Global Governance Unit, Berlin (2019-2020) 
• Intern I Blätter Für Deutsche und Internationale Politik, Berlin (2017) 

• Workshop facilitator | TeamGLOBAL, Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB) | (2013-2022)

   

Publications and Works
 

• Heiskanen, J., MacKay, J., Neumann, I. B., Wigen, E., Eskild, I., Hall, M., … Kappes, F. (2024). Nomads and international relations: post-sedentarist dialogues. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2024.2426782.
• Kappes, Franca: Paradise Lost? The Relational Topologies and Conjunctural Paths of Stateless Diaspora Cohesion and Fragmentation in light of Factionalised Contention. In Global Migration Research Paper Series (ISSN 2296-9810).
   

Fellowships, Grant and Awards
 

• EISA Doctoral Fieldwork Support Grant (2024)
• Gallatin Fellowship (2023-2024) 
• Global Migration Award (2022) 
• Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Scholarship (2022)
• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) I Excellence Scholarship (2020-2021) 
• Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation I Excellence Scholarship (2017-2021) 
• E-FELLOWS.NET I Scholarship (2015-2016)
   

Affiliations
 

• Global Migration Center (Doctoral Affiliate)
• Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY, NYC (Research Fellow) 
• Swiss Network of Young Migration Scholars