Dr. Leah Koskimaki

• PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology (University of Washington).

Leah Koskimaki is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Social Development (ISD) and the Coordinator for MMICA, the Migration and Mobilities Interdisciplinary Collective in Africa at UWC. She received her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington in Seattle. Her teaching contributions at ISD include postgraduate courses in Migration & Development and qualitative approaches to Research Methodology, and she supervises a cohort of MA and PhD students whose research engages issues of mobility, livelihood strategies, informality, and social transformation across Africa. Her current research interests include urban migrant and refugee precarity, temporality and solidarity, social infrastructure, transnationalism, youth politics and aspirations, and urban informality.

Previously to her work at UWC, Dr Koskimaki conducted extensive ethnographic and archival doctoral research in small towns in Uttarakhand, India on the intersection between regional mobilities, development aspirations and youth politics. She also worked as a Research Fellow for an NWO-WOTRO funded project titled, “Provincial Globalisation: The Impact of Reverse Transnational Flows in India’s Regional Towns” at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bengaluru, India, affiliated with the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). For this research she examined the influence of diaspora philanthropy, migrant remittances, and political transnationalism on the dynamics of rural and small-town development in South India.

Dr Koskimaki is also a co-investigator on several international research partnerships, including the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded projects “Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity and Hospitality in Global Perspective” on policies and practices of accommodating vulnerable and precarious migrants and refugees in major urban centres, the “South-South Migration and Migrant Food Security in the Global South (MiFOOD)” project,  which focuses on the neglected interactions between migration and food security within the Global South, and a New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) international collaboration, “Remitting for Resilience (R2): Enhancing Food Security and Climate Adaptation Through Gender-Inclusive Migrant Remittances.” She is also conducting ethnographic research with South Asian migrants in Cape Town, on how they navigate precarity and temporality through social “repair,” in building solidarities and using digital technologies.

• Koskimaki, L., & Mazani, P. (2025). Migrant and refugee solidarity in urban South Africa. In H. Bauder & M. B. Setrana (Eds.), Urban migrant inclusion and refugee protection: Volume 2: Global perspectives of sanctuary, solidarity, and hospitality (pp. 57–74). Springer. https://tinyurl.com/4ryk8d9f
• Koskimaki, L., Thom, N. F., & Kazadi, M. (2025). Migrant livelihoods and strategies in urban South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study of Congolese and Zimbabwean migrants in two Cape Town neighbourhoods. In S. Irudaya Rajan (Ed.), Handbook of research on migration, COVID-19 and cities (pp. 282–299). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035301232.00024
• Koskimaki, L., & Mukafuku, C. (2024). Refugee precarity and collective transformation: Ongoing struggles for a liberatory praxis in urban South Africa. Social Inclusion, 12, Article 8858. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.8858
• Mbatha, N. A., & Koskimaki, L. (2024). Temporalities of arrival: Burundian barbershops as an arrival infrastructure in a South African township. Urban Planning, 9, Article 8674. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.8674
• Mbatha, N., & Koskimaki, L. (2023). Making life liveable in an informal market: Infrastructures of friendship amongst migrant street traders in Durban, South Africa. Migration and Society, 6(1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.3167/arms.2023.060105
• Mbatha, N., & Koskimaki, L. (2021). No time to relax: Waithood and work of young migrant street traders in Durban, South Africa. Social Dynamics, 47(3), 422–438. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2021.1996693