Karen Iversen

Karen’s research explores migration, humanitarian aid, and resistance in Latin America. To date, her work has focused on activism related to internal displacement in Colombia, where the state has rolled out an extensive set of humanitarian policies targeting the millions of people internally displaced due to the country’s civil conflict. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with internally displaced populations, her research has explored how humanitarian assistance has shaped state-citizen relations. In her work, Karen has argued that humanitarian policies and discourses often provide opportunities that the internally displaced can utilise for activism and resistance. More broadly, Karen is interested in the complex relationship between humanitarian assistance, power, and resistance in experiences of migration, and adopts a Foucauldian approach to analysing these relationships.

Karen joined SPS in September 2024 as a lecturer in International Development. Her teaching is broadly focused on the politics of development, with a particular interest in humanitarianism and migration. She completed her PhD in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and holds an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In the past, Karen has taught at Queen Mary University of London, the LSE, University of Birmingham, and SOAS, and she is recognised as an Advance HE Fellow (FHEA).