Dawn Chatty

Professor Dawn Chatty is a leading authority on forced migration and social anthropology in the Middle East. Chatty has developed her career in universities in the United States, Lebanon, Syria, and Oman, as well as with development agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Her doctoral research in Syria and Lebanon among Bedouin sheep herders, along with later work among camel nomads in the Sultanate of Oman, provided field-based experience across the Levant and the Gulf. Chatty joined the University of Oxford, where she spent the remainder of her academic career, initially serving as the Dulverton Senior Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, now the Department of International Development. She was subsequently appointed university lecturer in forced migration and elected a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, before being promoted to Reader in forced migration. Chatty was later awarded a Title of Distinction as Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration. She also served as Director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.

Chatty's scholarship has produced a significant body of work that bridges academic inquiry and humanitarian issues. She held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, and her research during that period was published as "Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East." The book traces the history of those who, as a reconstructed Middle East emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, found themselves cut off from their homelands as refugees, with borders created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Through personal stories and interviews within different communities, Chatty examines how some minorities, such as the Armenian and Circassian communities, integrated and created new identities, while others, such as the Palestinians and the Kurds, have been left homeless within impermanent landscapes. Her other major works include "From Camel to Truck: The Bedouin in the Modern World," "Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East," and "Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State."

Her research interests cover a range of forced migration and development issues, including conservation-induced displacement, tribal resettlement, modern technology and social change, gender and development, and the impact of prolonged conflict on refugee young people. Chatty has worked with nomadic pastoral groups in Lebanon and Syria and extended her research to Oman, continuing to advocate for the rights of these populations to remain mobile and resist forced settlement. She is recognized as a scholar and advocate for the rights of refugees and other forced migrants.

Chatty was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. She has also delivered a British Academy lecture titled "The Duty to be Generous (karam): Alternatives to Rights-Based Asylum in the Middle East," demonstrating her commitment to applying scholarly expertise to global policy questions. Her decades of fieldwork, publications, and leadership at a major refugee research institution position her as a prominent voice on displacement, identity, and the resilience of communities in crisis.