Dr Emma Hill
Lecturer
Social Work and Social Policy
Personal statement
Dr Emma Hill is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde. Her areas of expertise include the coloniality of bordering and citizenship in the Global North, with a focus on the intersections of asylum, race, ethnicity and gender in the policies and governance of welfare and healthcare regimes in the UK and Europe.
Dr Hill’s research expertise includes: the devolved/reserved governance of asylum in the UK, the intersections of gender and race in migration governance in Europe, impacts of racialisation in housing and healthcare systems, and the impact of the coloniality power on UK/Scottish/Somali migration dynamics. Her monograph Navigating the Pathways of Somali Migration to (Post)Colonial Scotland: Between the Edges of Empire was published in 2025 by Palgrave MacMillan.
Dr Hill is the recipient of a series of prizes and awards, including the James Watt scholarship for PhD research (2013-17), the MacFarlane Prize for ‘outstanding contribution to research’ (2017). She recently completed a Race.ED Archival Research Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Her previous postdoctoral work includes research undertaken on the Horizon 2020/ESRC-funded GLIMER (Governance and Local Integration of Migrants and Europe’s Refugees) Project (2017-2021), and on the ESRC-funded CoDE (Centre for Dynamics of Ethnicity) on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the housing experiences of racially minoritized populations in England, Wales and Scotland (2021-2023). Dr Hill completed her PhD in Cultural Research at Heriot-Watt University in 2017.
Dr Hill is the Programme Lead for the MSc Health and Social Policy, and module lead for the MSc Dissertation in Social Policy/Criminology/International Social Welfare, and for the MSc Placement Dissertation in Health and Social Policy. She is an Associate Editor for Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power Journal, and a Trustee of the Board for Maryhill Integration Network.
Prize And Awards
- IASH Race.ED Archival Fellowship
- Recipient
- 2023
- Highly Commended Article published in the Sociological Review 2021
- Recipient
- 2023
Publications
- Relational entanglements of coloniality and asylum : British-Somali colonial genealogies and the Glasgow Bajuni campaign
- Hill Emma
- Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol 48, pp. 1019-1041 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2327527
- The role of asylum in processes of urban gentrification
- Hill Emma, Meer Nasar, Peace Timothy
- The Sociological Review Vol 69, pp. 259-276 (2021)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120970359
- 'The green areas are out of our reach’ : racialisation, erasure and resistance in UK urban greening initiatives
- Haycox Hannah Maria, Finney Nissa, Meer Nasar, Rhodes James, Hill Emma, Leahy Sharon
- Sociology Vol 59, pp. 161-179 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385241268399
- Navigating the (Post)Colonial Pathways of Somali Migration to Scotland : Between the Edges of Empire
- Hill Emma
- (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74197-5
- Housing governance and racialisation : ‘inclusivity’ in housing access and experience
- Haycox Hannah Maria, Hill Emma, Finney Nissa, Meer Nasar, Rhodes James, Leahy Sharon
- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol 50, pp. 4545-4562 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2344505
- Intersectionality and UK's multiscalar governance approach to race, gender and asylum seeking in Scotland and England
- Hill Emma
- Immigrant Lives Intersectionality, Transnationality, and Global Perspectives (2023) (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197687307.003.0009
Projects
- Archiving Somali Scots Histories
- Hill, Emma (Principal Investigator)
- The Archiving Somali Scots Histories (ASSH) Project will undertake a programme of research centred upon an unsorted collection of documents pertaining to the Somali Refugee Action Group held by the University of Edinburgh’s Special Collections. Aiming to both draw upon and expand previous research related to Somali migration to Scotland, the project seeks to mobilise the collection to (1) map the activities of the Group from the 1960s onwards, and place it in the context of migrant and race relations in Scotland and 2) gain insight into the impact of post/colonial relations between Somalia and Scotland in the immediate aftermath of Somali independence and beyond. The overall aim of the project is to gain a critical insight into how post/colonial entanglements have shaped Somali experiences of migration to and settlement in Scotland during a particularly significant time in their shared histories, and develop a critique of the operation of the coloniality of power in migration and post-migration environments
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2024
- Centre for the Dynamics of Ethnicity Project 4
- Finney, Nissa (Principal Investigator) Meer, Nasar (Co-investigator) Hill, Emma (Researcher) Haycox, Hannah (Researcher) Rhodes, James (Principal Investigator) Leahy, Sharon (Principal Investigator)
- 02-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2023
- Governance and Local Integration of Migrants and Europe's Refugees (GLIMER) Project (Horizon 2020/JPI Urban ERA Net)
- Meer, Nasar (Principal Investigator) Peace, Timothy (Co-investigator) Hill, Emma (Researcher)
- 30-Jan-2017 - 02-Jan-2021
Contact
Dr
Emma
Hill
Lecturer
Social Work and Social Policy
Email: emma.hill@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted