Kolar Aparna

researcher

Kolar Aparna is a researcher at the Nijmegen Center for Border Research, Radboud University. She is the initiator of Asylum University, a participatory action research in which collective exercises of hospitality are negotiated and reflected upon.

With a background in choreography and human geography, Aparna has been critically engaged with questions of spatial relations as central to power struggles, borders, and identities. Her current practice articulates the deep entanglement of research and pedagogical practices with everyday processes of producing asylum citizenship in the EU, while challenging eurocentrism in such relations. She has published in scientific journals such as Geoforum & Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa; edited volumes like Decolonising the University: Context and Practice (2018); Migration, Squatting, and Radical Autonomy (2017); independent media platforms like openDemocracy and Amateur Cities; and magazines like AGORA, Geografie, Social Kritik, and MONU. Aparna lives in Den Bosch and works in Nijmegen.