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Students & Campus
11 December 2025

Munia Hassoun Awarded the SYLFF Fellowship

First year PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology working under the supervision of Umut Yildirm, Munia Hassoun has been awarded the SYLFF Fellowship (Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund). Sylff is a global fellowship programme that supports graduate researchers in the humanities and social sciences who are committed to addressing complex social challenges through academic excellence and leadership.

Munia Hassoun’s research focuses on revolutionary legacies and the anthropology of the state. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Damascus and had a professional experience in the pharmaceutical and humanitarian sector in Syria throughout the years of conflict. In Switzerland, she completed a Master of Advances Studies in Humanitarian Action at the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies, and a Master’s degree in Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes (CREOLE) at the University of Bern.

Munia is currently a Scientific Collaborator at the University of Lucerne on the SNSF-funded project Between Intensification and Relativisation (BIR): Modalities and Mechanisms of Religious Change of Muslim and Christian Refugees from Syria in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. She is also a research member of Border Forensics, contributing to research and analysis focusing on the Swiss asylum dispositif. Alongside her research, she teaches in higher education settings in Switzerland, and has co-taught courses including Border Forensics at EPFL–ENAC and Critical Cartography in the Master’s program Critical Urbanisms and Changing Societies at the University of Basel.

Her published work addresses themes of conflict, identity, memory, displacement, and the politics of representation.
 

Read More about SYLFF Scholars at the Institute