Dr Manya Oriel Kagan

Profile

I am a sociologist of education, currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania. My research focuses primarily on refugee and migrant children education and rights, particularly in urban contexts. I earned my Ph.D. at the School of Education at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, Israel which focused on schooling of urban refugee children in Uganda. I have a background in comparative religions, international development, and a teaching diploma in arts. I have also worked, volunteered with, and studied refugee children’ access and support to education in Israel coming from Eritrea, Sudan, and Ukraine in Israel, Afro-Caribbean migrants in the US, and Ukrainian refugees in Poland. I have also conducted studies on education and development in East Africa, primarily in Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi, focusing on teacher training, low-fee private schools, alternative schools and migration and development policies. I

Research

Publications

• Kagan, M. and N. Shanee (2024). The uncounted and invisible challenges of refugee foster families in Kampala, Uganda. Adoption and Fostering 48(3).
• Kagan, M. and Winnie Nakattude (2024). I don’t meet Somali girls because they’re not supposed to go out”: Intersectional barriers facing Somali urban refugee girls in Uganda. Girlhood Studies 17(1). https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2024.170108
• Kagan M. “Redefining integration: what can we learn from the educational experiences of refugee children in the Global South?” (2022). NEOS (Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group of the AAA) 14(1). https://acyig.americananthro.org/neosvol14iss1sp22/
• Kagan, M., Pinson, H., Schler, L. (2022). No policies and no politics: Israeli teachers, asylum seeker pupils and remobilized strategies of avoidance and depoliticization. Race, Ethnicity and Education 25(1): 73-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1599346
• Kagan, M. and Y. N. Gez (2021): “We are everywhere”: International and local aspirations at Bridge International Academies in Kenya. Critique of Anthropology 41(4): 389-404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X211059661"

Expertise