Kinan Noah
Department: Centre for Middle East Politics (C-MEP)
Discipline: Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
Project Summary
My research project inspects Syrian refugees’ identity construction as it is highlighted in and through their autobiographical narratives in order to reach to, as much as possible, a profound understanding of how individual (and collective) discursive identity is navigated in the context of forced migration.
The aim of my project is threefold. The first goal takes Syrian refugees’ personal autobiographies as a point of departure, asking: What are the prevalent themes and aspects of identity that Syrian refugees topicalize in their personal narratives? The second aim is to consider the dynamics of recurrent aspects of identity as intertwined with narrative identity asking: What are the spatiotemporal agentive features which are most salient in the co-construction of narrative identity in Syrian refugees’ autobiographies? Highlighting narrative identity and its features, as shown in and through narratives, will increase the possibilities of reaching a better understanding of the drastic changes that Syrian refugees have gone through. Drawing on the first and second research question, the third aim is to depict collective characteristics of discursive identity representations of Syrian refugees through answering: How do individual and collective identity facets impact Syrian refugees’ identity representations?
Supervisory Team
Wider Research Interests
Forced Migration Studies
Refugees' identity representations
Autobiography
Narrative identity
Narrative ecology
Narrative analysis
