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Dr. Roland Bank
Roland Bank, Head of Protection for UNHCR in Germany, has numerous publications in international refugee law and human rights law. Roland Bank worked on various academic positions and taught international refugee law and human rights law in various institutions (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford; Hertie School of Governance, Berlin; Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public and Public International Law, Heidelberg; European University Institute, Florence). Before taking up the position at UNHCR, he worked as the principal legal adviser of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, which implemented a world-wide programme of payments for former victims of Nazi injustice.
Dr. Thomas Held
Dr Thomas Held, MBA, is Managing Director of the German Foundation for Peace Research based in Osnabrueck. The Foundation funds research projects in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, including Refugee Studies, and promotes knowledge transfer into politics and society.
Dr. Christiane Fröhlich
Dr Christiane Fröhlich, Lead Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, researches the interplay between forced migration, sustainable adaptation to global environmental change and socio-political upheavals, as well as the interactions between mobility control and state-building processes. At GIGA, she heads the research programme ‘Peace and Security’. Her regional focus is on the Middle East, but she is also involved in comparative, cross-regional projects, including the DAAD-funded Global Centre ‘Sustainable Adaptation to Global Change in the Middle East’ (SAGE Centre) and, previously, as working group leader in the EU-funded consortium Migration Governance and Asylum Crises (MAGYC).
Dr. Anne Koch
Dr Anne Koch works as a researcher in the Global Issues Research Group at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), where she heads the Strategic Refugee and Migration Policy research project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). She has researched and taught at the University of Oxford, University College London, the Hertie School of Governance and the European University Viadrina, and has worked in the Pacebuilding, Livelihoods and Partnerships Section of the UNHCR. Her research interests include development-oriented refugee and migration policy, global migration governance and migration diplomacy.
PD Dr. Judith Kohlenberger
PD Dr Judith Kohlenberger is a sociologist and cultural scientist and heads the Research Institute for Migration and Refugee Research and Management (FORM) at WU Vienna. She is a senior researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and an affiliate policy fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre at the Hertie School Berlin. She is a member of the Integration Council of the City of Vienna, co-editor of the Journal of Refugee and Migration Studies, and host of the podcast ‘Aufnahmebereit’ (Ready to Welcome). Her work has been recognised with the Kurt Rothschild Prize and the Anas Schakfeh Prize for services to human rights, democracy and the promotion of the rule of law. Her book ‘Das Fluchtparadox’ (The Refugee Paradox, 2022) was named Austrian Science Book of the Year 2023 and nominated for the German Non-Fiction Prize.
Dr. Axel Kreienbrink
Dr. Axel Kreienbrink is the Sub-Director of the Migration, Integration and Asylum Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. He studied history, political science and business administration. His thematic focus is on forced migration, regular and irregular migration, return and emigration from Germany, the potential of migration as well as migration and development.
Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries
Prof. Emeritus Dr Ludger Pries taught sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Ruhr University Bochum until 2025. He spent periods researching and teaching in Brazil, Mexico, Spain and the USA. His work and research focus on (international comparative) organisational and work sociology, migration sociology and transnationalisation research. From 1995 to 2025, he led studies on migration and refugee migration.
Shaden Sabouni
Shaden Sabouni, member of the Refugee Advisory Board Germany, is a research assistant at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences, Department of Economics and Social Sciences. She herself came to Germany as a refugee from Syria and completed her master's degree in Intercultural Communication and European Studies here. She recently completed her doctorate on the transformation of family dynamics among refugee families in Germany. She has extensive teaching experience in the field of flight, migration and integration, including at the University of Oxford. In addition to her teaching activities, she is active in the international research and publishing landscape and deals with issues of migration, integration and the effects of flight on social and family structures.
Prof. Dagmar Soennecken
Prof. Dagmar Soennecken is a professor at York University (Toronto, Canada). Her research focuses on comparative politics and public policy in the EU and North America. She is particularly interested in questions concerning law and the courts as well refugees, citizenship and migration. She has been a member of the executive committee of the university’s Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS) since 2016. In 2019, she became the editor-in-chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, one of the oldest peer-reviewed, academic journals on forced migration.
Dr. Bernhard Trautner
Dr Bernhard Trautner has held various positions at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) since 2006 and currently works in the Department for Policy Issues on Refugees and Migration. Since 2012, he has been teaching as an honorary professor at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Tübingen and the American University in Cairo, Egypt, among others. From 2015 to 2020, he was a senior advisor at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) on the Development and Stability in the Middle East project, advising the BMZ and the World Bank on issues such as the causes of flight and reconstruction in conditions of violent conflict. During his assignments abroad at German embassies, including in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he worked closely with the ILO and IOM on migration issues.
Prof. Dr. Annette Treibel
Prof. Dr. Annette Treibel was Professor of Sociology at the Karlsruhe University of Education (Homepage: University of Education Karlsruhe) until her retirement in October 2023. Her main area of research is migration, which she has been studying since the 1980s. Her publications for both academic and wider audiences have achieved a wide reach. She continues to be active in academia and journalism. From 2011 to 2015, she was spokesperson for the Migration and Ethnic Minorities Section of the German Sociological Association. From 2019 to 2021, she was a member of the German Federal Government's Commission on the Framework Conditions for Integration Capacity.