Maya Goodfellow

Dr. Maya Goodfellow serves as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre within the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, and holds a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at SPERI, University of Sheffield. Her academic work critically examines intersections of race, bordering practices, and capitalism, with specific focus on the politics of 'the centre' and material manifestations of racism.

She earned her PhD from SOAS, University of London in 2019, where her doctoral research analyzed race and racialisation processes in British international development discourse concerning India (1997-2017). During her SOAS tenure, she taught across Politics and International Studies and Development Studies departments.

Goodfellow's research spans race theory, immigration enforcement systems, border politics, and racial capitalism. Her acclaimed book Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats (Verso, 2020) deconstructs the racialized foundations of UK immigration policy through archival research and interviews, with a pandemic-era analysis added in the 2020 revised edition. This work established her expertise in linking historical policy frameworks to contemporary racial governance.

Her principal recognition includes:

• Longlisting for the Jhalak Prize (2020) for Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats

The Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship funds her current Sheffield-based project exploring racial capitalism's material dimensions. She actively engages public discourse through regular contributions to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The New York Times, alongside frequent appearances on BBC and Sky News as a policy commentator.