Helena Zeweri

Helena Zeweri is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies in the Global Security and Justice track at the University of Virginia. Prior to joining UVA, Helena completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Rice University in Houston and taught courses in the Anthropology department and Rice’s Program in Writing and Communication. At UVA, Helena teaches courses on global migration, immigrant-led political activism, and humanitarianism, and their intersections with race, gender, and culture.

Helena’s research examines the politics of race and gender within immigrant-targeted social welfare programs in settler colonial states, with a focus on Australia, as well as refugee and diasporic-led politics. Her working manuscript titled “Between Care and Criminality: Marriage, Citizenship, and Family in Australian Social Welfare,” examines how the marital practices of immigrants become the latest frontier where social welfare in Australia becomes entangled with institutionalized Islamophobia, the racialized criminal justice system, and nativist ideas of good citizenship.