About me

Thank you for visiting my webpage! 

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the UC San Diego Center on Global Justice, where I study how states use migration and climate-induced displacement as instruments of political and demographic governance. My work examines the strategic role of displaced populations, what I conceptualize as citizen-material, in shaping national identity, territorial control, and state-building projects. I recently completed my Ph.D. in Sociology at UC San Diego.

My book project, Refugees as Citizen-Material, develops the Citizen-Material framework to explain how refugee governance functions as a tool of nation-building and demographic engineering. I argue that states strategically include refugees who embody preferred ethnic, religious, or ideological traits while marginalizing domestic populations perceived as incompatible with national ideals. This selective incorporation reveals how refugee inclusion and minority exclusion operate as complementary components of a single demographic project through which states construct and contest the boundaries of political belonging. 

My emerging research agenda bridges refugee studies with climate mobility. Building on a decade of comparative global refugee governance research, I now examine how climate extremes, border policy, and state narratives interact to shape mobility and vulnerability, particularly in the San Diego–Tijuana border region and across California. This interdisciplinary direction integrates political sociology, migration studies, and climate science to analyze how states imagine their ecological futures and manage climate displacement.

My broader research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, policy papers, book chapters, and public-facing reports. As part of the Climate-Resilient California & Californians initiative, I produce analyses of extreme weather events, displacement dynamics, and community-based resilience models, aiming to bridge climate science with political sociology and environmental justice.

I am dedicated to engaged and community-oriented teaching. At UC San Diego, I taught Sociology of Immigration, Political Sociology, and Qualitative and Comparative-Historical Methods. Teaching near the U.S.–Mexico border shaped my pedagogy, which emphasizes experiential learning, collaborations with local NGOs, and linking academic training to applied work in migrant and refugee justice.

My professional background includes policy research in civil society and international organizations. I previously conducted human-rights research in Turkey, contributed analysis to UNHCR’s World on the Move, and served as an invited expert for UNESCO’s Inclusive Policy Lab. My scholarly and pedagogical contributions have received competitive recognition, including the IGCC Dissertation Fellowship, the Barbara and Paul Saltman Excellence in Teaching Award, and UC San Diego’s Interdisciplinary Research Award.

Across all my work, I study migration, not only as movement across borders, but as a lens into how states imagine and construct their political, demographic, and ecological futures through the selective incorporation of citizen-material.

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The original spelling of my name: Şevin Gülfer Sağnıç

How to pronounce my name:  "Ş" is pronounced as "Sh", S(h)evin.  

Fun fact: my name means "night" in Kurdish, and coincidentally, I was born late at night.