Research areas

Sine Plambech's research focuses on international migration, human trafficking, smuggling, search & rescue on the Mediterranean, border politics, refugees, women's migration, sexual violence, sex work, marriage migration, documentary film, and visual anthropology. Sine Plambech conducts fieldwork in migrant and border communities in Nigeria, Thailand, Italy, Denmark and onboard migrant rescue ships on the Mediterranean. 

Sine Plambech is an awardwinning filmmaker and author and as part of her research she continously explores alternative forms of representation and research dissemination through creative writing, film and visual anthropology.

Current research

RESCUE - Research and Film on the Mediterranean. We follow migrants, militsias, rescuers at sea, and decision makers. We examine political challenges, everyday practices, human fates and stories, and humanitarian dilemmas on the Mediterranean.

PI: Sine Plambech

Sexual Violence across the Mediterranean

For several years, evidence is growing on the prevalence of pregnancies resulting of sexual violence on the migration journey. The research will focus on the routes from and through Sudan and Niger to Libya and Tunesia and onwards to Europe in documenting the experiences of professionals and structures working in this area, as well as those of migrants, so that they can express their own point of view, how they experienced the care offered, what they would have liked, etc.

The project is a collaboration between Danish Institute for International Studies and Danish Red Cross

PI: Sine Plambech

Previous Projects

In the monograph GLOBAL SEX Sine Plambech takes the reader on a global journey into the world of sex in the age of migration. Drawing on over 20 years of ethnographic research the book explores the contemporary transformations of labor, feminism, border politics through the prisms of sex, gender and migration. The book was awarded the Gyldendal Non-Fiction Award and Jyllandspostens Non-Fiction Award.

The project WOMEN ON THE MOVE with Open Society Foundations engaged with the contemporary ‘European migration crisis’ in relation to the urgent issue of women as refugees, migrants and trafficked. The project examined women's undocumented migration routes from West Africa to Europe, with fieldwork in Nigeria, North Africa and Sicily. 

In the project Women, Sex & Migration: Seeing Sex Work Migration and Human Trafficking from the Global South, Sine Plambech explored how sex work migration and human trafficking are practiced, perceived and have impacted two communities in Thailand's Isaan province and Nigeria’s Edo State where migration has become a familiar social phenomenon with many families having a female relative in Europe.

The project was awarded the Sapere Aude Elite Grant by the Danish Research Council.

Managing Migration: Risks and remittances among migrant Thai womenWomen from Asia are increasingly traversing borders to marry men in the Western world. This project presented ethnographic research focused on Thai women married to Danish men. The films Fra Thailand til Thy and Heartbound are based on this research.