Gerda Heck is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology and the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at The American University in Cairo. Her academic work and research focus on migration and border regimes, urban studies, Migration governance and European externalization politics, migrant networks, organizing, and infrastructures, gender and migration, religion and new concepts of citizenship. She has conducted research in Brazil, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, Ghana, Germany, Morocco, Turkey and the USA. From September 2021 till January 2022 she was a visiting scholar within the scope of the BECHS-Africa Fellowship at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Within the scope of the DAAD exchange project Dialog on Migration Governance in the Euro-Mediterranean Region (DiaMiGo), she is Principal Investigator for the American University in Cairo. She is a member of kritnet: Network for Critical Migration- and Border-Regime Research.