Dr Aila Spathopoulou

I joined the department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Stirling as a Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology on 1st January 2024. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I am also an editor in ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.

In February 2025, I completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2022-2025) that interrogated the uneven spatio-temporalities of refuge/asylum and return from and across Europe and the UK with a particular focus on how ferries, cruise ships and barges are being used as offshore floating prisons for people racialised and criminalised as "refugees", "displaced people", "asylum seekers" and "migrants".

I hold a PhD from the department of Geography at King’s College University, London. My monograph "Bordering and Governmentality around the Greek islands" published by Palgrave Macmillan (2023), is based on (auto)ethnographic work on the Aegean border islands in Greece during the so-called "refugee crisis" and its "aftermath" (2015-2020).

In 2019 I co-founded the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research in Athens. My work with my collaborators at FAC research, has shaped my analysis and understanding of theory, border violence and border abolition through feminist perspectives. At FAC I co-organised the annual 'Feminist No Borders Summer School'.

My key research interests are in the criminalisation of migration, border violence, the political economies surrounding border violence, carceral spaces (including island detention, ships and seas), border and prison abolition, practices of refusal, night studies, and auto-ethnography.

My research focus for many years has been on the Aegean border islands, particularly Lesvos, a place that I consider both a home that I am always returning to and a prison from which I seek to escape...

Recently I have become interested in the ways in which the border has expanded upwards into the sky and the governance of the night within carceral contexts, such as detention, camps, and Closed Control Access Centres that confine people criminalised and racialised as 'migrants', producing a 'carceral sky'. I am reflecting on and attempting to write what it means to reclaim the night as a site of freedom and the sky as a horizon of abolitionist world-building, in which darkness, the stars, and the moon, are reclaimed as sites of hope, survival, memory, healing, resting, and dreaming, as well as connection with one another and oneself across borders and distances that are meant to keep us separated.

I am currently part of a collaborative research project ‘Exposing and Combating the Political Economy of Border Violence in the Aegean’, together with the Legal Centre Lesvos, Dr Lauren Martin (University of Durham), Dr Geoff Boyce (University Collage Dublin) and Dr Anna Carastathis (Feminist Autonomous Centre for research). The present research project came out of the strong need to find alternative ways to document and fight border violence against people on the move. As part of this research project, we are developing a comprehensive and searchable public online database documenting Greek border-related outsourcing contracts. The Border Industry online public database will be a crucial tool for activists, non-profits, investigative journalists, academics and researchers focusing on the consequences of border control at Europe’s external(ised) borders. The project is also an opportunity for to re-think and expand litigation strategies and avenues for extended accountability for human rights violations that affect people on the move. A forthcoming co-authored research report introducing the Border Industry database and its findings will be published in October 2026.
For this research project we have received the following funds:

Durham Research Development Funds 2024/25, University of Durham (Awarded in January 2024): £15,000

Stirling University Impact Acceleration Award, IAA 2025 (Project Lead, Aila Spathopoulou) (Awarded in April 2025): £5,000

Grant Seedcorn Fund 2025/26, University of Durham (Awarded in June 2025): £20,610.00

Antipode Foundation Right to the Discipline Grant 2025 (Awarded in July 2025): £10,000

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-Office in Greece (Awarded in February 2026): 20,000 euros to publish, translate (from English into Greek) and disseminate our forthcoming research report.

In Scotland, my other home from my mother's side, I am (re)turning to the Scottish Highlands and Islands and embarking on a new research journey. In this geographical region that is represented as being remote, melancholic and isolating, I am (un)learning old and new meanings from experiences related to migration and belonging, arrival and departure, moving on and returning, harm and healing, research and writing.

Previous research projects: Refuge or Return: Changing spatio-temporalities of EU refugee asylum (2022-2025). Funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Early Career Fellowship).

Criminalising Freedom of Movement: a course and a podcast series (2023-2024): Supported by the University of Brighton IGNITE fund Together with Dr Deanna Dadusc, Camille Gendrot and Dr Anna Carastathis, as FAC research, we designed an online community course that was delivered in Spring 2023 (see syllabus:https://feministresearch.org/community-courses/#RCF). In this course, we brought together no-border activists and scholars engaged in the struggle against the criminalisation of facilitation, as well as people who have been directly criminalised by the EU border regime. From the recordings of the course, we created a podcast series (available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/224L5XOvWVmD2LdKC6v8Lw?si=a3afeebd6f7d4cb6&nd=1&dlsi=0e57f8930d2a433b). For further information see: D. Dadusc, C. Gendrot, A. Spathopoulou and A. Carastathis. (2024) Criminalising Freedom of Movement: a course and a podcast series. Available at:https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-criminologies-blog/blog-post/2024/09/criminalising-freedom-movement-course-and-podcast. Accessed on: 11/05/2025

Practices of Refusal (2023): As part of my Leverhulme fellowship, together with Dr Isabel Meier (Northumbria University) we have been thinking and writing on practices of refusal as relating otherwise within specific locations of struggle. Inspired by Indigenous and Black feminist writers, activists, and thinkers we approach relating otherwise as a ‘mode of engagement’ – not a theory or method – that shapes relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world. Our thinking about refusal also emerged from our engagement with different movements against borders and our involvement in diverse anti-racist, trans-feminist, and abolitionist activist collectives and spaces (e.g. Feminist Autonomous Centre for research 2023, the Feminist No Borders Summer School) and anti-racist No Borders/border abolition groups mobilising for a world without borders and prisons. You can find our Special Issue and the wonderful contributions from which we learned so much on practices of refusal, in open access in Fennia: An International Journal of Geography. https://fennia.journal.fi/issue/view/8956

A pandemic of abuses (2020-2023). Funded by the ESRC and Geography departmental funding, University of Durham: Together with the Legal Centre Lesvos and FAC research we co-authored a research report titled "A pandemic of Abuses" that documents how Greece dismantled the right to asylum and normalised the violation of migrants' rights throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Lesvos: https://legalcentrelesvos.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/A-Pandemic-of-Abuses.pdf

PhD Supervision

I welcome proposals from prospective doctoral researchers interested in critical and interdisciplinary approaches to criminology, sociology, migration, and borders. I am especially interested in supervising projects on border criminology, the criminalisation of migration, refugee and asylum experiences, detention and deportation, border violence, abolitionist perspectives, feminist and anti-racist scholarship, practices of refusal and resistance, and ethnographic or participatory approaches to research. Interdisciplinary proposals are warmly encouraged.

I am a Fellow of the HEA. I co-convene the undergraduate dissertation module SSPC Dissertations. It is a joy to be co-coordinating this module and to be working together with the students on their wonderful dissertation ideas and studies. In Spring 2026, I convened Border Violence, Carceral Sites and Migrant Justice, a new postgraduate module that I developed based on my research and solidarity practice in the context of EU border enforcement. I am, also, co-teaching the postgraduate module Criminological Perspectives (CRMP010/11). I contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate modules for criminology on the criminalisation of migration and solidarity. I was delighted and moved to be awarded a 2025 RATE award for Outstanding Academic Mentorship.