Tricia Hepner
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Arizona State University 4701 W. Thunderbird Rd., MC 3051 FAB S110G Glendale, AZ 85287-7805
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Mail code: 3051Campus: West
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Dr. Tricia Redeker Hepner is a political and legal anthropologist with a regional focus on Northeast Africa and the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Africa, and thematic interests in migration and displacement, transnationalism, human rights, transitional justice, militarism, and conflict and peace. She has conducted research in the Horn of Africa and with refugees and asylum seekers from Eritrea/Ethiopia in North America, Europe, and Africa for over twenty years. This long-term work has informed her participation in hundreds of asylum and refugee cases, and her testimony has been influential in immigration rulings in the US, Canada, Europe, and Israel. In a separate project, she collaborates with forensic anthropologists and archaeologists to examine the meanings and material impacts of the missing and unidentified dead in post-war Northern Uganda’s post-war transitional justice process and to document improper burials in mass graves and former displacement camps. She has published five books and more than twenty peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters to date. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council, and the US Fulbright Scholars Program in Germany. Prior to joining ASU in August 2020, she held positions in the Africana Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, where she co-founded and directed the Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights (DDHR) Program. Since has served in voluntary leadership roles in the American Anthropological Association and on the editorial boards of the African Studies Review and the African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review.
Dr. Hepner is currently Senior Associate Director of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. From 2020-2023 she directed the MA Program in Social Justice and Human Rights.
BA, Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University (1996)
MA, Anthropology, Michigan State University (2000)
PhD, Anthropology, Michigan State University (2004)
See this ASU News Story: ASU professor helps civil war survivors in Uganda properly bury their loved ones
Forthcoming Publications
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Magnus Treiber, eds. 2026. The Anti-Refugee Machine: Interpreting Global Migration Control. New York: Berghahn Books
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Magnus Treiber, eds. 2025. Special Issue: The Anti-Refugee Machine: Interpreting Global Migration Control. Migration & Society, Vol. 8, No. 1
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Magnus Treiber. 2025. "Introducing the Anti-Refugee Machine." Special Issue: The Anti-Refugee Machine: Interpreting Global Migration Control. Migration & Society, Vol. 8, No. 1
Hepner, Tricia Redeker. 2025. "Afterword: Changing Migration Regimes and Challenges to Migrants’ Moral Economies." Transnationalities of Migrant Moral Economies in a Transforming World. Vytis Ciubrinskas and Nina Glick Schiller, eds. Berghahn Books.
Kim, Jaymelee J. and Tricia Redeker Hepner. Spirits and Bones: Social Ecology, Justice, and Forensic Intervention (submitted)
Recent Publications (Books, Articles, Chapters)
Berhane, Fiori S. and Tricia Redeker Hepner. 2024. "The Eritrean Diaspora in the United States and Italy: Securitization, Ethnoreligious Differences, and Political Divisions." In Takeyuki Tsuda, ed., Handbook of Migration, Ethnicity, and Diversity. Edward Elgar. Pp. 248-262.
Smith-Cannoy, Heather and Tricia Redeker Hepner, eds. 2023. Human Rights on the Edge: The Future of Human Rights Law and Practice. London: Routledge.
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Dawnie Wolfe Steadman. 2023. "Bedeviling Binaries: An Integrated and Dialectical Approach to Forensic Anthropology in Northern Uganda." In Roberto C. Parra and Douglas H. Ubelaker, eds. Anthropology of Violent Death: Theoretical Foundations for Forensic Humanitarian Action. West Sussex, UK: Wiley & Sons, Limited.
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Daniel Rezene Mekonnen. 2022. "Justice Futures: Forensic Investigation and the Potential for Transformation in Eritrea." Special Issue: Eritrea’s Uneasy Future, Modern Africa: Politics, History, and Society. Vol. 10, issue 1, pp. 117-144 https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v10i1.414
Hepner, Tricia Redeker and Magnus Treiber. 2021. "The Anti-Refugee Machine: A Framework for Migration Studies." Sociologus: Journal for Empirical Social Anthropology. Vol 71, 2, pp. 175-190 [2022]
Treiber, Magnus and Tricia Redeker Hepner. 2021. "The Immediate, the Exceptional, and the Historical: Migration from Eritrea and Research Since the 1960s." Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 563-583. https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2021.1871638
Hepner, Tricia Redeker. 2020. "At the Boundaries of Life and Death: Notes on Eritrea and Northern Uganda." African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 127-142.
Courses
2025 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
2024 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 502 | Found of Soc Just & Hum Rights |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
2024 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 592 | Research |
2024 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 525 | Critical Methodologies in SJHR |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
2023 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 502 | Found of Soc Just & Hum Rights |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
2023 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 592 | Research |
2023 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 394 | Special Topics |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 394 | Special Topics |
2022 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 510 | Problem-Based Sem Social JHR |
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 584 | Internship |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 584 | Internship |
2022 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 584 | Internship |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 592 | Research |
2022 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 599 | Thesis |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 592 | Research |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 100 | Intro Soc Justice Human Rights |
| JHR 584 | Internship |
2021 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 353 | Death&Dying Cross-Culturl Prsp |
| ASB 353 | Death&Dying Cross-Culturl Prsp |
| JHR 593 | Applied Project |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
2021 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 584 | Internship |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
2021 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| JHR 525 | Action Research |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |
| JHR 590 | Reading and Conference |
| JHR 580 | Practicum |
| JHR 595 | Continuing Registration |