Dr Francesca Meloni completed her PhD at McGill University, Montreal, Canada in 2014. Before joining King's College London, she worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford and UCL and she was Lecturer at Humboldt University, in Berlin, and Northumbria University.

Research

Francesca's research focuses on contemporary processes of migration and social exclusion. She is interested in the interface between migration, policy, race, and age, and in the impact of legal status on the experiences of belonging and access to social services.

Francesca has a background in anthropology and over 15 years of experience conducting ethnographic and collaborative research in migration contexts. Her work is interdisciplinary, at the intersection of anthropology, sociology, and public policy.

She has experience of conducting research on: undocumented young people and social belonging; access to healthcare and education for undocumented migrants; the transitions into institutional adulthood of unaccompanied minors; datafication and hostile migration policies in welfare services.

She has published in major journals in social sciences. Her book Ways of Belonging: Undocumented Youth in the Shadow of Illegality, published by Rutgers University Press, examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K–12 schools in Canada and are rendered invisible to the education system.

Her research interests include:

• Migration, rights and citizenship
• Undocumented immigration and experiences of illegality
• Migrant young people, children and families
• Access to healthcare and education for migrants
• Datafication and data-sharing in public services
• Ethics and participatory research approaches

Teaching

• Social Science at Work (BA Social Sciences)
• Global Childhoods (MA International Child Studies)

Francesca is Deputy Director of the MA International Child Rights and Development.

PhD supervision

Francesca is happy to supervise students in the following areas: migration, race and ethnicity; young people, citizenship and belonging; access to welfare services; datafication and migration/bordering; childhood and ethics; participatory research approaches.

You can find out more about Francesca on her PURE research profile.