I am an anthropologist by training and received my BA in Sociocultural Anthropology at Brigham Young University in 2016. My research interests have always centred on immigration and its consequences on transnational families. I received my MA at the University of Ottawa in 2019. My masters research focused on options for family reunification for resettled refugees in Canada. I have also worked as a case analyst for Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada and plan to continue on to law school in Fall 2020 to specialize in immigration law. In my spare time I play the banjo and like backpacking.
In Winter 2019, I was working on research with Dr. Patti Tamara Lenard at the University of Ottawa related to refugee resettlement and legal foundations for family reunification in Canada. She told me about LERRN and suggested that I would be interested in learning more about the legal foundations for refugee law in Tanzania. This seemed like an opportunity to broaden my understanding of the application of international refugee law in a local context, in particular in a protracted refugee situation.
I conducted research in Summer 2019 in Tanzania regarding the country’s national legal framework for refugees. I had to learn as much as I could about the country conditions before arriving and then spent a month in Dar es Salaam speaking to stakeholders and partners about the laws, policies, and practices of refugee hosting in Tanzania. Thankfully, the ethnographic and quantitative research I participated in through LERRN is deeply rooted in partnering and co-creating knowledge with local organizations and partners. The most important experience to me was fostering personal and research relationships with my Tanzanian research partner, Leonard Chimanda, and the Tanzania working group members. Their understanding of the laws and issues is central to the working paper we produced.