Dr Aila Spathopoulou she/her

I joined the department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Stirling as a Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology.

I hold a PhD from the department of Geography at King’s College University, London.

Prior to joining Stirling, I have held research positions at various universities, Tampere University, Goldsmiths University of London and more recently at the University of Durham. I am also co-founder and co-coordinator of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research in Athens.

My key research interests are in the criminalisation of migration, border violence and the ways in which it becomes inscribed in racialised and gendered ways on people’s bodies, carceral spaces (including island detention and carceral sea spaces), harm (including forms of self-harm), border and prison abolition, practices of refusal and auto-ethnography.

My recently published monograph “Bordering and Governmentality around the Greek islands”, is based on long-term ethnographic research on systems that seek to criminalise people racialised as “migrants”, “asylum seekers” and “refugees” but also how they are resisted by people on the move.

Recent Publications: 

• Spathopoulou, A. (2023). Bordering and Governmentality Around the Greek Islands. Springer Nature.
• Spathopoulou, A., & Meier, I. (2023). Practising refusal as relating otherwise: engagements with knowledge production, ‘activist’ praxis, and borders. Fennia – International Journal of Geography, 201(2), 140–153. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.137167
• Spathopoulou, A., Carastathis, A., & Tsilimpounidi, M. (2022). ‘Vulnerable refugees’ and ‘voluntary deportations’: Performing the hotspot, embodying its violence. Geopolitics, 27(4), 1257-1283.