Miriam Ticktin is Professor in Anthropology and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York. She publishes widely on topics such as migration, borders, humanitarianism, and racial and gendered inequalities. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France and co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. Her most recent book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World, is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press (2025).
Miriam was a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor hosted by MMB and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol in May-June 2025, when we held a series of workshops and lectures with her. She has collaborated with MMB previously, taking part in our first Insights and Sounds series and contributing to our blog series on Borderland Infrastructures following a field trip to Calais and Dover with us in 2024 (see more details below). Miriam is part of the Transoceanic Mobilities Network of researchers co-founded by MMB Director Bridget Anderson.
Events
MMB/Anthropology and Archaeology Public Lecture 2025 with Miriam Ticktin
Wednesday 21st May
‘From Transnational Borders to No Borders? Commoning, Abolition and Imagining Otherwise’
Migration is a lightning rod in political debates globally; from Tunisia and South Africa to the US, Australia and many countries in Europe. And in most of these places, managing migration is synonymous with closing the borders. In this talk Miriam discussed the transnational politics of border walls, before it turned to the transnational political movements that work to counter enclosures and forms of containment. These struggles sometimes use the language of ‘no-borders’, and they involve a similar set of transnational circuits as do the technologies and designs of border walls, but with the opposite goal. While taking seriously these powerful politics and counterpolitics, ultimately Miriam is interested in how people are imagining different ways of being, alongside or in the interstices of these visions. She ended the talk by discussing these forms of alterpolitics, grounded in collective living, and abolitionist forms of world-making.
More information here.
Discomfort and Social Justice: An Interactive Workshop
Wednesday 28th May
This workshop brought together colleagues from different disciplines to explore experiences of discomfort while conducting research. We shared individual examples of such moments and drew on work about innocence by Miriam Ticktin to explore questions that uncover what these reveal about the politics, ethics and integrity of our work.
More information here.
PGR Research Workshop on Migration, Borders and Justice
Wednesday 4th June
An academic ideas lab—quick, focused, and conversational. This workshop invited PGRs to ‘pitch’ their research, challenge, argument or even their crazy and creative research idea, briefly and boldly. In a supportive setting with two senior scholars, Professor Miriam Ticktin and Professor Bridget Anderson, each presenter had three minutes to share their ideas with the group, followed by a ten-minute open discussion.
More information here.
Previous MMB activities with Miriam Ticktin
MMB Podcast, 2025: ‘The good, the bad and the migrant?‘ Migration Unboxed Series 1.
MMB blogpost, 2024: ‘Transnational borders: from containment to freedom‘ as part of our Borderland Infrastructures series.
MMB Insights and Sounds interview, 2021: ‘Invasive Others: Plants? People? Pathogens?‘