Maeli is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Bristol and a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project Representing the Undead Past of Slavery: Global, National and Local Contestation and Co-Production. She previously worked as a Research Associate on the project Modern Marronage?: The Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World at the University of Bristol (2022–2024).


Her research draws on anthropological approaches to narratives and everyday life, with particular attention to postcolonial and critical race perspectives. She examines how differences of race, class, and gender, rooted in colonial histories, are continually reproduced and negotiated through everyday social relations, shaping the inequalities experienced by marginalised groups.