Leila Whitley

Leila Whitley has worked as full-time teaching faculty in the Critical Gender Studies program at UC San Diego since 2018. Prior to this, she was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Zukunftskollege of the University of Konstanz in Germany. Her current research project examines the construction of European belonging through media depictions of migration, with a focus on race, gender and sexuality. She also writes on sexual harassment in higher education. She is the UC-AFT statewide delegate (2021-23) for UC San Diego's teaching faculty and a member of UC-AFT's leadership committee for the San Diego chapter.

Ph.D. Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2015

M.A. Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2008

B.A. Cultural Studies, McGill University, 2006

Journal Articles:

Whitley, L. (2023). Images of Mediterranean Crossing. Social Text. (accepted and forthcoming)

Whitley, L. (2022). Narratives of Harm: Accounts and Displacements of Sexual Harassment in Institutional Space. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 47(2): 347-369.

Carastathis, A., Kouri-Towe, N., Mahrouse, G. & Whitley, L. (2018). Introduction to Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the ‘Refugee Crisis.’ Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 34(1): 3-15

Whitley, L. (2017). The Disappearance of Race: A Critique of the Use of Agamben in Border  and Migration Scholarship. Borderlands journal 16(1): 1-23.

Whitley, L., & Page, T. (2015). Sexism at the Centre: Locating the Problem of Sexual Harassment. New Formations 86: 34-53. 

Whitley, L. (2015). The Body as Border? Using Arizona’s SB1070 to Rethink the Spatiality of the US-Mexico Border. Central European Journal of International and Security Studies 9(3): 23-41. 

Book Chapters:

Whitley, L., Page, T., & Corble, A. (2021). Collective Conclusions. In Complaint!, by Sara Ahmed (261-273). Durham: Duke University Press.

Whitley, L. (2018). Killjoy Movements. In A.J. Habed & S. Ponzanesi, Eds. Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe: Portraits, Networks and Connections (248-262). London: Rowman and Littlefield International.

Public Scholarship:

Whitley, L. (2020) How Contingent Faculty Contracts Contribute to Sexual Violence on Campus. The Gender Policy Report.