Our Fellows

Dr. Juhar Yasin Abamosa

Key expertise:
  • Western host countries
  • Refugee higher education
  • Refugee integration
  • Social inclusion and exclusion
  • Hidden – but intentional – prejudices as mechanisms of exclusion
  • Pedagogy of the Others(s)

Abdirahman Ahmed

Abdirahman Ahmed is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Migration Studies at Jigjiga University, Ethiopia. His research interest is on the durable solutions for forcibly displaced (refugees and IDPs) and diaspora engagement in Ethiopia.

Key expertise:
  • forced migration, refugees, IDPs
  • migration policy
  • migration and development
  • diaspora studies
  • climate change
  • GS GN research collaboration and knowledge production

Ziad Alahmad

Ziad Alahmad, a Ph.D. Candidate at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. And a part time lecturer at Bunkyo Gakuin University. His research focuses on integration dynamics of forced migrants and the receiving communities.

Key expertise:
  • Integration
  • Temporary protection
  • Transit migration
  • Forced migrants’ entrepreneurship

Shaddin Almasri

Shaddin Almasris background is a mix of research and policy work, activism and advocacy with a particular interest in the in- and exclusion of refugee and migrant groups. She is a PhD student in Migration studies based in Austria now.

Key expertise:
  • refugee policy differentiation
  • refugee labour inclusion
  • nationality-based aid
  • jordan compact

Dr. Dr. Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah

My name is Dr Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah from Kumasi, Ghana. I am currently a Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana and a visiting lecturer at PAULESI-University of Ibadan Nigeria (PAULESI). I had training for my PhD in Medical Research International Health from the Ludwig-Maximilian Universität München (LMU) and Reproductive Health Sciences from the PAULESI, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. My research expertise comprises medical sociology-HIV and infectious diseases, gender, migration health, human rights and social protection and adolescent sexual reproductive health.

Key expertise:
  • Gender intersectionality
  • Migrant and Refugee Health
  • Displacement and Climate mobilities, and Human Trafficking
  • Health Ethics
  • Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
  • Social Protection
  • Human Right and Sexuality Law
  • Social Medicine
  • HIV and Adolescent Health
  • Population and Public Health

Dr. Ayar Ata

Ayar Ata is a freelance postdoctoral researcher and linguist. He is an active member of the Sustainability Research Group at London South Bank, a member of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) and served as ExCom member 2018-2020.

Key expertise:
  • Front line migration integration consultant
  • adviser
  • advocate
  • linguist
  • freelance social researcher in England

Bojana Babic

Bojana comes from the spaces of Ex Yugoslavia. She is interested in the various issues around displacement ever since the Bosnia war. This interest brought her back to academia almost a decade ago and many education and research roads in different disciplines and countries. Bojana is particularly interested in continuing to inform her research inquiries within the economic and philosophical anthropology approach along with the multimodal ethnography of everyday life in urban environments.

Key expertise:
  • Migration and refugee studies
  • Urban anthropology
  • Economic anthropology

Prof. Dr. Bezen Balamir Coşkun

Bezen Balamir Coşkun is an international relations scholar at TED Univeristy Ankara. She is passionate to bring in the human factor into foreign policies and actions.

Key expertise:
  • Human security of refugees and migrants
  • Gender and Forced Migration
  • Women Peace and Security Agenda

Asresahegn Birhanu Gelaw

Asresahegn Birhanu Gelaw is a PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University and Lecturer at Debre Markos University, Ethiopia.

Key expertise:
  • refugee integration
  • durable solutions
  • refugee-host community conflict
  • IDP

Professor Bidisha Biswas

Bidisha Biswas is Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University, USA. Her current research interests lie in Global South initiatives to address protracted displacement situations and other human rights challenges. She has also conducted extensive research on diaspora politics in the USA.  

Key expertise:
  • Refugee governance

Ioanna Blasko

Ioanna Blasko is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Human Geography at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests include the meaning of 'integration', highly skilled refugee integration, and labour market and workplace inclusion. Her dissertation uses qualitative methods to examine the workplace and labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, with case studies on engineers with a refugee background.

Key expertise:
  • Highly skilled migration
  • Refugee labour market integration
  • Refugee workplace integration
  • Refugee integration infrastructure in Sweden
  • Refugee engineers

Dr. Veronica Gabriel Buchumi

Key expertise:
  • Family Law
  • Child Rights and Protection
  • Migration and Refugee Studies

Ester Nergis Canefe

Nergis Canefe is a Full Professor at the Department of Politics, York University, Toronto, Canada and a graduate faculty member at Graduate Programmes in Social and Political Thought, Socio-Legal Studies, Humanities, Osgoode Hall Law School and Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Law at the same institution. She received her PhD at York University, Programme in Social and Political Thought and her SJD (PhD in Law) on international criminal law at Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada.  

Key expertise:
  • Forced Migration Studies
  • International criminal law
  • Administrative Law
  • Critical Citizenship Studies
  • Political Theory

Dr. Jorge Morales Cardiel

Jorge Morales Cardiel has a PhD. Based on his own experiences in Mexico, he studies migration intrinsically from within.

Key expertise:
  • Researcher of forced migration in transit through Mexico

Prof. Dr. Saniye Dedeoglu

Saniye Dedeoglu is professor of social policy in the Department of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations at the University of Mugla, Turkey. Her research interest centres around the issues gender, work and migration in contemporary Turkey.

Key expertise:
  • Gender
  • Migration
  • Labour

Dr. Evan Easton-Calabria

Evan Easton-Calabria is a Senior Researcher at the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, in Boston, USA, and a Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

Stella Effah

Key expertise:
  • Climate-induced internal displacement (IDPs) impact on social cohesion
  • Transnational migrants and development.
  • Migration and development

Basma Taysir El Doukhi

Basma Taysir Al Doukhi, a Palestinian PhD scholar in Migration studies based in the UK now, human rights activist, humanitarian practitioner and a founder of Roouh social enterprise, which is a platform for female refugee artisans to tell their stories in their own words through their craft. Before pursuing PhD, I worked for over a decade as a humanitarian professional, supporting refugee communities in the MENA region on behalf of the UN. This experience accrued in the field was the impetus for my doctoral research on the role of Syrian and Afghan associations lived realities and role in fostering social cohesion. I am undertaking a comparative case study of Syrian and Afghan associations supporting their displaced communities in Turkey. My PhD project is the first study of these associations  undertaken by a scholar with a refugee background. My background is a mix of practice, research and policy work, with a particular interest in the topics of representation, voices and power within a refugee and migration studies. 

Key expertise:
  • Knowledge production and decolonizing research
  • Refugees and displacement
  • Politics of forced migration and integration
  • Participation in policymaking
  • Civil society and refugee-initiatives
  • Diaspora studies and refugees’ journeys
  • Intersections of displacement, humanitarianism and international development
  • Decolonizing research and practice and knowledge production
  • Lived expertise, representation, power and story-telling

Rebecca Enobong Roberts

Key expertise:
  • Forced Displacement
  • Forced Migration
  • Inclusive Urbanisation
  • Resettlement
  • Local Integration
  • Social Cohesion
  • Rights to the City
  • Action Research
  • Community Engagement

Merve Erdilmen

Merve Erdilmen is PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a research assistant for Durable Solutions Cluster at Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN). Her research focuses on the localization of humanitarian assistance, gender mainstreaming, and refugee-led organizations in Turkey.

Key expertise:
  • Refugee-led organizations
  • Gender
  • Gender equality
  • Refugee protection

Dr. Alex Tomas Fusco

Key expertise:
  • Refugee Camps
  • Borders
  • Social Relations and Spatial Forms
  • Spatial Imaginaries of Forced Migration

Prof. Dr. Lila García

Lila GARCÍA is Adjunct Researcher (tenured) at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Argentina. She is also Adjunct Professor of ‘International Contemporary Politics’ and ‘Argentinean Foreign Policy’ in the Department of International Relations at  University of Mar del Plata (Argentina) and holds a Ph.D. in International Law. Her research interests are on migration and human rights (particularly on the role of courts in migration control) and on new intermestic frameworks to deal with human mobility from a human rights-based approach.

Key expertise:
  • Migration and human rights
  • Migration Law
  • Courts
  • Migration control
  • Borders
  • Social rights

Abis Getachew Makuria

Key expertise:
  • Forced Migration
  • Refugee Economies
  • Social Cohesion
  • Informal Sector
  • Labor Market

Dr. Feriha Nazda Güngördü

Nazda is an urban planner, urban politics researcher and lecturer at Çankaya University, Turkey. She is affiliated with Bahçeşehir University Centre of Migration and Urban Studies (BAUMUS) for her ongoing research on internal bordering in Turkey. Nazda holds a Ph.D. in Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments from Middle East Technical University (METU).

Key expertise:
  • Migration studies
  • Refugee studies
  • Urban studies

Dr. Osama Hazzi

Osama Hazzi is a Vienna-based Syrian doctorate holder from Damascus University with academic experience in Austria (e.g., Postdoc at the University of Vienna). Currently, he is a Visiting Researcher (online) at Carleton University, Canada.

Key expertise:
  • Micro-Organizational Behavior
  • Migration and Integration
  • Human Resource Management
  • Sustainability
  • Research Methods

Dr. Fred Nyongesa Ikanda

Fred Ikanda is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Maseno University, Maseno, Kisumu, Kenya. He is a holder of a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and has published widely on refugee and forced migration issues. His doctoral research focused on how kinship sustains the continued existence of the Dadaab camps in northeastern Kenya. 

Key expertise:
  • Refugee and forced migration
  • Kinship
  • Anthropology of Islam
  • Gender studies
  • Social cohesion in protracted refugee situations

Nyima Jadama

Key expertise:
  • Media
  • Migration
  • Project Management
  • Women Empowerment

Dr. Palash Kamruzzaman

Palash Kamruzzaman is a Senior Lecturer in social policy at the University of South Wales (USW), UK. He conducted research in Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, Jordan and Afghanistan and published in the areas of refugees and displacement, expertise in international development, politics of development, aid ethnographies, participation in policymaking, global development goals (eg SDGs, MDGs), civil society and extreme poverty.

Key expertise:
  • International development
  • Knowledge production
  • Refugees and displacement
  • Global South
  • Politics of development
  • Participation in policymaking
  • Civil society and extreme poverty

Prof. Dr. Ayşegul Kayaoğlu

Aysegul Kayaoglu is an associate professor of economics at Istanbul Technical University and has a resarch focus on migration, labour economics and development economics. As a self-funded fellow (Tübitak) she is joining IMIS for a full year.

Key expertise:
  • Economics of migration
  • Gender
  • Labor economics
  • Informal institutions
  • Conflict

Olena Khodchenko

I am Olena Khodchenko, PhD in history, a lecturer at the Department of World History at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University in Ukraine. My research primarily focuses on the history of migration processes, the adaptation and integration of immigrants, and the study of diaspora groups, particularly Germans and Mennonites.

Key expertise:
  • scientific work on the history of migration processes
  • adaptation and integration of immigrants
  • Mennonites and Germans

Dr. Gülay Kilicaslan

Gülay Kilicaslan is a political sociologist holding a PhD from the Department of Sociology at York University, Canada. Her dissertation examines the impacts of forced displacement on the dynamics of political mobilisation in the context of Kurdish contentious politics.

Key expertise:
  • Critical forced migration studies
  • Refugee law and politics of citizenship and resettlement
  • Nation-state and border violence
  • Resistance and social movements in the Global South (particularly in the Middle East)
  • Digital activism and culture

Nur Nadia Lukmanulhakim

Nur Nadia Lukmanulhakim, more commonly known as Nadia Lukman is a first-year doctoral candidate at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. She is conducting research on home and identity among second-generation Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. The more than a decade crisis that happened in Rakhine has forced the Rohingya refugees to be in a protracted displacement with their status continuing to be in limbo. Therefore, her research would like to study the idea of home and belonging among second-generation Rohingya refugees in Malaysia using qualitative approaches. Nadia is also actively involved in the issues of labor migration in her home countries via non-governmental organizations. 

Alfiya Lyapina

Key expertise:
  • Forced migration
  • Immigration from Syria
  • Immigrants in Russia
  • Categorization
  • Agency in forced migration
  • Survival migration

Dr. Daniel Mekonnen

Key expertise:
  • International Human Rights
  • International Refugee Law
  • Diaspora & Migration Studies

Dr. Margaret Monyani

Margaret Monyani is a Global Excellence Stature Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she attained a Doctorate in International Relations in 2021.

Dr. Khangelani Moyo

Khangelani Moyo is an independent researcher and a research fellow at the University of the Free State, Qwaqwa campus in South Africa. He has a background in Migration Studies, Urban Studies, Sociology, and Social Anthropology. His research interests include migration management, refugee governance, migrant transnationalism, spatial identity in the city and social vulnerabilities in the urban peripheries.

Key expertise:
  • Migration and Refugee Studies
  • Migrant Space
  • Migrant Transnationalism
  • Migrant and Refugee Integration

Dr. Mohammad Nayyeri

Mohammad Nayyeri is a Lecturer in Law at Brunel University London where, among other modules, he teaches the postgraduate module ‘The Migrant, the State, and the Law’. He is also the co-director of the ‘Migration, Asylum and Law’ research group at Brunel Law School, and has been recognised as an expert by the European Union Agency for Asylum. He gained his PhD in law in 2020 at King’s College London and has also studied law in Iran up to PhD level and qualified as an Attorney at Law. 

Key expertise:
  • Legal theory
  • Law and philosophy of human rights
  • Immigration and asylum law
  • Populism

Anila Noor

Anila Noor is a refugee-activist and researcher. She is founder and managing director of “New Women Connectors”, a refugee womenled movement, that aims to empower refuges and (im)migrants, and she is also a steering Board Member of the Global Refugee-led Network Co-founder of European Coalition (GRN).

Dr. Michael Owiso

Michael is a member of the faculty in the School of Development and Strategic Studies at Maseno University-Kenya. He is also the Dean of the same school. He has taught subjects in the fields of political science, international relations, and development studies at various universities in Kenya and abroad. He was previously in the humanitarian sector for over 17 years during which he made contributions to the peacebuilding and humanitarian field while working with various organizations.

Key expertise:
  • East and Horn of Africa
  • Political Science
  • Policy Studies
  • Migration Studies
  • Security
  • Peace and Conflict Studies

Shaden Sabouni

Shaden Sabouni is a PhD researcher at Fulda University for Applied Sciences at the department of Social and Cultural Science. She is currently working on her PhD about “The Consequences of Losing Home for Syrian refugees in Germany”.

She also works as a freelancer at GIZ as a Cultural and Land analysis Trainer, gives lectures at the University of Koblenz. She also engages in Integrational Structurer for Refugees.

Key expertise:
  • Tutor at the University of Oxford/ The Refugee Led Research Hub on Forced Migration Studies

Dr Mary Rose Sarausad

Key expertise:
  • international labour migration
  • forced displacement
  • population movements
  • gender and development
  • Urban settlements and refugees
  • Welfare systems and social safety nets

Roda Siad

Key expertise:
  • Humanitarianism
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Critical Data Studies
  • Migration Studies
  • Refugee governance
  • Communication Studies

Lejla Sunagic

Lejla Sunagic is a PhD student at Lund University, specializing in qualitative research. Her research centers on the field of forced migration, with a specific focus on the secondary migration of Syrian refugees to Europé. Before pursuing PhD studies, she gained valuable work experience in the development and aid sectors in the Balkans, Middle East, and Africa.

Key expertise:
  • Migration
  • Risk research
  • Qualitive methods

Ph.D. Gizachew Teshome Haile

Key expertise:
  • conflict transformation
  • peacebuilding
  • refugee impacts on demographic and political dynamics
  • refugee-host community interaction
  • localization of the CRRF
  • migration
  • social cohesion between host-communities and refugees from the Global South

María Gabriela Trompetero Vicent

Maria Gabriela Trompetero Vicent is a Doctoral candidate and a lecturer at Bielefeld University with an M.A. in Inter-American Studies. She researches the categorization process of displaced people, focusing on Venezuelan forced displacement and its impact on social cohesion and migration policy development in the Americas, as well as the Colombian response to Venezuelan forced displacement.

Key expertise:
  • Forced migration
  • Migration governance
  • Processes of categorization of people on the move

Eline Wærp

Eline Wærp is a PhD student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER) at the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö university. She has a background in Political Science and International Relations, and her research focuses on the European Border and Coast Guard agency’s (Frontex) role in securitizing migration.

Key expertise:
  • Frontex
  • Securitization
  • EU border control
  • Irregularized migration