Fiori Berhane

Fiori Berhane is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California. Her research focuses on African refugees, particularly Eritrean refugee activists in Italy, and their engagement with colonial and post-colonial policies within Central Mediterranean migration contexts.

Her educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University (2021)
• M.S. in Education from City College, City University of New York (2013)
• B.A. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia College, Columbia University (2007)
• Provost Post-Doctoral Fellow for Faculty Diversity at University of Southern California (2021-2022)

As a political and legal anthropologist of migration, Dr. Berhane examines relationships between migrant activism, border infrastructures, and postcolonial racial politics across Eritrea, Libya, and Italy. Her work engages Global Black Studies, Critical Border Studies, and Anthropology of Europe, investigating how Black migrants exercise political agency amid radical exclusion through what she terms "disjunctive memory work" that reworks severed colonial histories.

Her recent publications in Cultural Anthropology and Migration and Society reveal consistent thematic patterns: intersectional analyses of Blackness within migration systems, critiques of humanitarian recognition paradoxes, and examinations of non-statist solidarities among Eritrean migrants. These works highlight how refugee politics emerge from encounters with asylum systems, detention infrastructures, and transnational smuggling networks across historical and geographical contexts.

Her notable awards include:

• American Academy at Rome Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Modern Italian Studies (2019-2020)
• Fulbright Open Study Award to Italy (2017-2018)

Dr. Berhane has secured competitive research funding including a Wenner Gren Foundation grant ($12,956) for "Eritrea, A Diaspora in Two Parts" (2017-2018). As an Assistant Professor, she mentors graduate students in anthropology while developing her book project "Prisoners of Our Dreams: Eritrean Diaspora Politics in 'Red' Italy," which analyzes Eritrean dissident activism through two historical conjunctures: Italy's Communist Party hegemony in the 1970s and contemporary radical-right migration laboratories.