In 2016/2017, Ahmed was granted a Wiener-Anspach fellowship in the framework of his doctoral research. Now his dissertation, entitled “Sortir du placard, entrer en Europe: la fabrique des ‘réfugié.es LGBTI’ en Belgique, en France et au Royaume-Uni“, has been awarded the Dissertation Prize in Social Sciences by the University of Montreal. Ahmed completed his PhD under the joint supervision of Professors Frédéric Mérand (University of Montreal) and David Paternotte (ULB), a Wiener-Anspach Alumnus.
“The aim of my PhD thesis was to understand how persecutions based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which do not appear in the Geneva Conventions, came to be recognised as grounds for granting refugee status, leading to a new category of refugees which didn’t exist twenty years ago”, said Ahmed in an interview published on the website of the University of Montreal (in French, available here).
Ahmed is currently a Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where he is carrying out a research on “The construction of a New Space of Collective Action: Mobilisations in favour of LGBT Refugees in the UK”, under the supervision of Dr Véronique Mottier (Department of Sociology).