Dr. Veronika Deffner is a social and cultural geographer. She is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore. Prior to this, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the German University of Technology (GUtech) in Muscat/Oman and a Research Fellow at RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Her research covers social, cultural, and political aspects of international migration and cities in the Gulf region. She is particularly interested in the production of space and society in the heterogeneous Gulf societies, the question of the Urban, and the nationalisation and economic diversification process in the Gulf