PhD candidate

Senior Teaching Assistant

Email:Gabriel-le dot du-plessis at warwick dot ac dot uk

Office Hours

Term 1

• Thursday: 13:00 to 14:00
• Friday:15:00 to 16:00

Term 2

• Wednesday: 13:00 - 15:00

Book a time

Profile

Gabriel is an ESRC-funded doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. Focussing on Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, their research considers the ways queer and trans refugees develop livelihood strategies, establish support networks, and advocate for international assistance. Through this focus, they aim to critique an interpretation of protection that gestures towards queer and trans refugees being mute, generalisable, and depoliticized, without adequately engaging in the myriad complexities involved in the ways freedom-seeking practices are navigated.

Focusing on this, the general objective of their current research is to work towards more effective protection, safety, and freedom for queer and trans refugees—arguing that situated approaches to humanitarian aid and assistance are essential if the needs of queer and trans refugees are to be fully recognised, addressed, and realised.

Previously, Gabriel received a bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), a master's degree in Sociology at Masaryk University (Czech Republic), and a master’s degree in Social Studies of Gender at Lund University (Sweden).

Gabriel’s doctoral research is supervised by Dr Cath Lambert and Professor John Solomos.

Research Interests

• Forced Migration
• SOGIESC Asylum
• Digital Media
• Homonationalism
• Necropolitics
• Queer Theory

Teaching

Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant - University of Warwick

2023- 2025: Academic Writing Mentor

2024 - 2025: SO242 Designing and Conducting Social Research

2022 - 2025: SO120 Researching Society and Culture

2022 - 2024: SO116 Sociology of Gender

Seminar Tutor - University of Cape Town

2021-2024: DOH1002F: Writing in the Humanities

2022-2023: ASL1203S Writing Across Borders

Lecturer - University of Cape Town

2020-2021: AXL1100S Understanding Gender (co-instructor)

2021-2021: AXL 2100F Gender, Sexuality, and Politics

2020-2021: AXL4103S Development, Conflict, and Political Change.

Guest Lecturer

2019: We Need New Names: Queer Legibility and African Contexts (University of Cape Town, South Africa).

2023/2024: Gender, 'Equality' and the Post-Apartheid Era in South Africa (University of Warwick, UK).

URSS Project Supervision

2024-2025: Jessica Birks-Kent,' Deconstructing Cisness,' University of Warwick, UK.

2023-2024: Elliott Willis & Dae Pomeroy, 'Visualising Neuroqueer Identity Through Safe Spaces', University of Warwick, UK.

Book Chapters

du Plessis, G. 2024.[forthcoming]. 'Life in Limbo: Queer and Trans Encampment in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp', in B Camminga and John Marnell (eds.) East African Queer and Trans Displacement. Bloomsbury.

Encyclopedia Entries

du Plessis, G. [Forthcoming, 2025], 'LGBTQIA+, Refugees and Asylum Seeking' The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, SAGE Publications Limited, Thousand Oaks.

du Plessis, G. [Forthcoming, 2025], 'Queer Migration' The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, SAGE Publications Limited, Thousand Oaks.

Book Reviews

du Plessis, G., 2022. Queer & Trans African Mobilities: Migration, Asylum and Diaspora: edited by B Camminga and John Marnell, New York, Zed. Available here.

du Plessis, G., 2023. Internment Refugee Camps: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: edited by Gabriele Anderl, Linda Erker, and Christoph Reinprecht, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag. Available here.

Conference Presentations

du Plessis, G (2024) "Life as Lived, Experienced, and Told: Communication Practices in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp". Queer(y)ing Asylum Symposium, 9 November 2024, University of East London, UK.

du Plessis, G (2024). "Life as Lived, Experienced, and Told: Queer Legibility and Forced Migration". Writing from the South, 18 July 2024, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

du Plessis, G (2024). "Waiting For My Future: Queer and Trans Encampment in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp". Queerness and Gender Diversity in/to Migrations: Norms, Discourses and Control Mechanisms, 26 April 2024, Migrations & Mobilities axis (aMiMo) of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA). Istanbul, Türkiye.

du Plessis, G. (2023). "Queer Migration: (En)countering Protection Strategies in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp". Mind the Gap: Disrupting LGBTQIA+ Divisions, 29-30 July 2023, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

du Plessis, G (2023) "Lived Realities of Queer and Trans Asylum Seekers in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp" Crises and Hope: Understanding the Processes, Relationships, and Inequalities in Migration (BSA and Sheffield Migration Research Group), 19 June 2023, University of Sheffield, UK.

du Plessis, G. (2015) "What Mugabe Said: Homosexuality in Africa and the Problem of Context". Gender Week Festival: Nobody Passes, 23-25 June 2015, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.

Discussion Panel

du Plessis, G., Abbey, M., & Scuzzarello, S. (2024). "Queer Migrations: Perspectives, Practices and Possibilities". 24 April, 2024. BREM & Sex Queer Research Network, University of Warwick, UK.

Podcasts

Theoryish, 'Jack Halberstam: Queer Art of Failure', ep.6, 20 March 2023.

Awards and Scholarships

2023-2024: Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence: Winner

2021-2025: ESRC DTP Studentship Award

2014-2016: Swedish Institute Scholarship

2012-2014: Erasmus Mundus Scholarship

2010-2012: National Research Foundation (NRF) Grant