Associate ProfessorSam Balaton-Chrimes

Through in-depth qualitative research in Kenya and around the world, Sam's work shows how data, technology and bureaucracy can help and hinder the aspirations of minority, marginalised and stateless communities. Her book Knowing Ethnicity: The Politics of Classification and Pluralism (Cambridge University Press 2026) delivers pathbreaking insight into the risks of ethnoracial classification in future digital ID and data and governance ecosystems in Kenya and beyond, as well as charting options for how to understand ethnic marginalisation without centralised data.

Her ongoing projects explore how ethnoracial classifications are used in civil registration, vital statistics and digital ID systems, how this affects the right to nationality, and how nationality and statelessness determination procedures work in practice. She has a special interest in how bureuacracy grapples with complex cases of marginalised identity groups, or people without 'valid' documentation, both in the countries in which they were born and when they migrate. Sam's interest in these on the ground practices of exclusion, inclusion, marginalisation or adverse inclusion stem from a career-long interest in the underlying politics of belonging, identity and the pitfalls of the nation-state.