Dawn Chatty
Dawn Chatty, is an American social anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Middle East, nomadic pastoral tribes, and refugees. From 2010 to 2015, she was Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford.Early life and education
Chatty was born on October 16, 1947 in New York City, United States, to Diaeddine Chatty and Eleonora Swanson. She was educated at Wakefield High School in Arlington County, Virginia, and was a member of the class of 1965. She studied anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree. She then studied social development at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, from which she graduated with a Master of Arts degree. Having returned to UCLA, she studied for a doctorate in social anthropology under Hilda Kuper.Academic career
Chatty is both an academic and practising anthropologist. She has held appointments at universities and at humanitarian organisations. This reflects her research interests: the Middle East, nomadic pastoral tribes, and refugees, particularly young refugees.
From 1977 to 1979, Chatty was Fulbright professor at the University of Damascus in Syria. She then worked for United Nations Development Programme as a technical assistance expert and was based in Oman between 1979 and 1988. She then returned to academia and was an associate professor at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman from 1988 to 1994.
In 1994, Chatty joined the University of Oxford, where she spent the rest of academic career until retirement. From 1994 to 2002, she was the Dulverton Senior Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House. In 2002, she appointed university lecturer in forced migration and elected a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. In September 2004, she was promoted to Reader in Forced Migration. From October 2005 to September 2007, she held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship; the research she conducted during this period was published as Dispossession and Displacement in the Modern Middle East. Between 2011 and 2014, she was Director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. In January 2012, she was awarded a Title of Distinction as Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration.
In 2015, Chatty retired from full-time academia and was appointed an Emerita Fellow of St Cross College and an Emerita Professor of the University of Oxford. She is a visiting professor of anthropology at New York University's Abu Dhabi campus.
Chatty's 2018 book Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State, was criticized for containing errors of fact and of omission, in particular, in discussion the multiple causes of the Syrian Civil War, Chatty omits any discussion of the Syrian government's longstanding support of multiple Palestinian militant organizations, and omits discussion of the destruction and depopulation of Syria's Yarmouk Camp, which contained 110,000 people, most of them descendants of Palestinian refugees, at the beginning of the war.Personal life
In 1979, Chatty married Oliver Nicholas Patrick Mylne. Together they have two children: one son and one daughter.Honours
In 2015, Chatty was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.Selected works
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