Nick Mai – University of Leicester, United Kingdom

Nick Mai is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. His research straddles criminology, sociology, and anthropology, focusing on the experiences and representations of criminalised, marginalised, and stigmatised migrant groups. His work is qualitative and based on a long-term ethnographic engagement with the people and communities with whom he has undertaken his research. Nick Mai is the author of the book Mobile Orientations: An Intimate Autoethnography of Migration, Sex Work, and Humanitarian Borders (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018). The book received the American Sociological Association Sexualities Section 2020 Distinguished Book Award. Prof. Mai has also co-authored the book Migration and Social Cohesion in the UK (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He is also a co-author of the book Out of Albania. From Crisis Migration to Social Inclusion in Italy (Berghahn Books, 2008).

Professor Mai is also a filmmaker, an engagement that complements his academic writing and emerges through the collaboration with migrants and sex workers, by expressing their perspectives, priorities, and needs. Nick Mai believes that collaborative filmmaking is a way to create knowledge together with people who are directly concerned and to make sure that they own the terms of their representations. In the future, Nick Mai would like to continue his work on migration by focusing on the relationship with climate change, the transition to green societies, and the displacements and mobilities that are emerging in the process. Email: nick.mai@leicester.ac.uk.