Marina's research expertise lies in the field of gender and migration with particular attention for (migrant) women's paid work in Yemen and Ethiopia. She has studied a wide variety of topics such as women's work in the Moroccan carpet sector, female health care workers in a development project in Yemen, migrant domestic workers in Yemen, and adolescent migrant girls in Ethiopia. In addition, she has a keen interest in the history of migration between Yemen and the Horn of Africa and has done, and is still doing, research about Yemenis of mixed Yemeni-African descent (so-called muwalladeen). Last but not least, she is interested in feminist research methodologies and in particular in the role of friendship in the field.
Marina has published extensively in high ranking journals such as Gender & Society, Signs, Critical Asian Studies, Gender, Work & Organization, the Journal of Eastern African Studies, North East African Studies and Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees. Her first monograph Pioneers or Pawns: Women Health Workers and the Politics of Development in Yemen was published by Syracuse University Press (2007). She co-edited (with Bina Fernandez) Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East - The Home and the World (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and published together with Katarzyna Grabska and Nicoletta Del Franco the monograph Adolescent Girls Migration in the Global South - Transitions into Adulthood (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). Marina regularly writes blogs for Standplaats Wereld, the departmental blog (www.standplaatswereld.nl), and short articles for non-academic journals.
From 2017 - 2020 Marina was the Principal Investigator of the WOTRO funded project "Syrian Refugee Youth in Jordan: Early Marriages in Perspective". In 2021 she led a research project about people of mixed Yemeni-African descent in Yemen which was commissioned by the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies.
In addition to academic publications, Marina aims to dissemminate her research results to a wider audience. She has been involved in various filmprojects, namely:
- Young and Invisible: African Domestic Workers in Yemen (Arda Nederveen Productions 2007)
- Time to Look at Girls: Adolescent Girls Migration in the Global South (2016)
- 2 Girls (award winning documentary) (2016)
- Studying Sensitive Issues: The Importance of Involving Syrian Refugees in Research on Early Marriage (2019)
Marina is the initiator of the website Lives in Perspective (www.livesinperspective.org) and one of the initiators of the Jemencast, a podcast in Dutch about Yemen (together with Anthon Keuchenius and Sam van Vliet).
