Dr Angela Smith

Angela Smith is a human geographer whose research spans political and environmental geographies of migration and displacement, border security, and aviation and air power. Angela is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Languages, where she teaches human geography, international studies, and environmental humanities. Angela recently held the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Western Sydney at Western Sydney University.

She was a 2024 Visiting Fellow at NCCR - On the Move in Switzerland, and a 2019 Fellow of the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at the New School for Social Research in New York. Angela has a Masters in Migration Studies from the American University in Cairo and a PhD from the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW. Her interdisciplinary doctoral project combined political and legal geography, mobilities literature, critical theory, and social theory to explore the boundary-making power of civil aviation across the Mediterranean border zone. 

Angela brings to her scholarship more than a decade of experience working as a practitioner with diverse communities and international organisations. She has worked as a consultant with the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo, the North Africa Mixed Migration Task Force, Transparency International, UNHCR, IOM, UNICEF, the World Social Forum, and Forensic Architecture research agency.

As part of her political geography scholarship, Angela undertakes place-based research in Western Sydney aimed at addressing spatial and class inequities across Sydney. Building upon her work in this area, Angela was awarded a 2024 James Martin Institute Policy Challenge Grant.