Our Fellows

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.  

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.

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.  

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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).

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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).

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.

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.

Roda Siad is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her research interests are on the social and political implications of digital infrastructures, particularly in migration management and refugee governance. Her doctoral study examines humanitarian innovation and the implications of emerging technologies and data-driven practices on refugee protection and governance in East Africa.

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.

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.

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.