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Manya Kagan

Manya Oriel Kagan, PhD sociologist of education and visiting scholar at the Integration and Belonging Hub

Manya Oriel Kagan, PhD is a sociologist of education, currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, under the “Global Shifts: Migration, Urbanization, and Climate Change” initiative. She focuses on refugee and migrant children’s rights to and in education in urban settings, primarily in East Africa and the Middle East. Her work focuses on development policy, social justice, and migration and how these affect education and child rights. She has published in journals including Race, Ethnicity and Education, Critique of Anthropology, Girlhood Studies, and Adoption and Fostering. She co-edited a Hebrew-language book, Development in Africa, and is the current co-editor of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology of Childhood (NEOS).

Her PhD is from the School of Education at Ben Gurion University, Israel, and focused on refugee children in Kampala, Uganda. She holds a BA in comparative religions and a Master’s in international development, both from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She also teaches at Ben Gurion University, in a Masters program focusing on African Sustainable Communities, a course on Youth in Africa, and acts as a supervisor at RSUC, Oslo for Masters students in education.