Julianna Nielsen

Julianna Nielsen is a Graduate Student Fellow at the Centre for Global Studies and an MA Student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. She has research interests in human mobility, borders/boundaries, asylum regimes, refugee resettlement, memory practices, citizenship, public art, social movements, and community organizing. Her masters work responds to the questions: how does the changing nature of borders, shifting where and how boundaries are exercised by states and experienced by people on the move, interact with the right and practice of seeking protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention and, in particular, its 31st Article? In light of new international agreements and border governance techniques and technologies, how can we better understand and resist the global erosion of the right of asylum?

She completed a BA in History (honours) and Political Science (major) at UVic in 2020 and comes to the centre with a background in global history, political theory, and public memory. She grew up in a rural community on the lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation and, for six years, has been an uninvited guest on the traditional and unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nation.