I am an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Lafayette College. My research is situated at the intersection of anthropology, urban studies and human geography and considers questions of displacement, place, digital placemaking, belonging, identity, memory, urban space and urban refugee encampment among Palestinian refugees.
My first project considers questions of attachment to place amid experiences of iterative displacement. I focus on the former residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria who, having lived in Syria as refugees for decades, suddenly found themselves displaced from Syria by civil war. Fieldwork for this project included in-person ethnographic research in Lebanon and Jordan as well as digital and archival research of maps, city plans, UN and governmental documents, photographs and videos.
My emerging second project takes Palestinian archives, exhibitions and museums as both objects of study and sources of data to consider the role of collection and exhibition in the transnational constitution of Palestine as a past, present and aspirational future place of residence and attachment. It will analyze how the nation is placed–that is, produced to occupy a spatial, temporal and social location through practices of collecting and exhibiting in different contexts and aimed at difference audiences across the globe. It will involve both ethnographic research in present day museums and exhibitions and digital and in-person archival research into long-standing Palestinian collections.
Matthew DeMaio 