PhD student

EHESS – Paris, France / Ifpo – Amman, Jordan

Biography

Léa Macias is a PhD student in contemporary anthropology at EHESS (Paris) under the supervision of Michel Agier (EHESS- IIAC/IRD) and Kamel Doraï (CNRS/Ifpo). She holds a master’s degree in Development Studies from IEDES (Paris 1 Sorbonne University) and conducted humanitarian needs assessments in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Balkans between 2014-2016 for an NGO. Her PhD research focuses on the development of statistical tools and information management initiatives in the humanitarian sector. Her research aims at exploring the statistical tools used and data collected by various humanitarian actors in refugee camp settings and later measuring its impacts on the humanitarian intervention, the geography of the camp and the refugees involved in these exercises.

Research project

Her research falls into the topic of refugee politics of the Lajeh project (axis 3). The focus of this research will be the politics and mechanisms of humanitarian data production and management in the second largest camp in the world, and the fourth “city” of Jordan, Zaatari refugee camp. Based on in-depth field investigations this research intends to conduct interviews with humanitarian stakeholders, field workers and Syrian refugees as well as to explore databases compiled by various UN Agencies and NGOs in Jordan. The role of information management as a product and agent of the remodelling of the humanitarian space will be at the core of this research.

Key words

Refugee camp, data, information management, geography, humanitarian aid, Zaatari