Understanding how political coalitions establish and maintain dominance is crucial in light of authoritarian transitions worldwide. The centrality of capital cities to political systems suggests that they are of particular importance to how power is consolidated and resisted at a national level. This project examines capital cities as sites of dissent and control, and the dialectic between these dynamics.

My thesis centres on the involvement of NGOs and other humanitarian actors in Search and Rescue operations in the Mediterranean. It explores the difficult political challenges that emerge as part of NGOs’ relations with European states, private actors and migrants themselves as well as within a civil society divided by debates on migration. It asks how humanitarians have historically carried out programmes at sea and uses these insights to shine light on contemporary practices of interception, surveillance and interception. 

In most Amazonian societies, the communication with beings beyond the human (e.g., animals, plants, or spirits) exerts a large influence on social life. A range of ethnographic studies show for instance how beyond-humans may prescribe behavioural rules, punish gross misdemeanour, or serve as reminder of moral codes (for example by means of dreams or by sending visual cues and sounds).