Matthew DeMaio

My work mixes ethnographic, digital and archival methods to explore questions of displacement, place and attachment in the Palestinian refugee diaspora. His ongoing dissertation project focuses specifically on the lives and experiences of the former residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp in southern Damascus who have faced multiple rounds of movement as a result of the Syrian Civil War. In doing so, the project analyzes how attachments to, and conceptions of, place are fashioned and carried across iterations of displacement and how these accumulated attachments shape encounters with new places of refuge and manifestations of belonging.

Ongoing projects

Made to Move: Placemaking and Accumulated Attachments among Palestinian Refugees from Syria (Dissertation Project)