Unsere Fellows

Juhar Yasin Abamosa is currently an associate professor at Department of Pedagogy, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. His research interests include refugee higher education, refugee empowerment and integration, social inclusion and exclusion, hidden – but intentional – prejudices as mechanisms of exclusion, and issues related to pedagogy of the Other(s).

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.

Veronica Gabriel Buchumi is currently a lecturer of law at the University of Dar es Salaam School of Law, where she also coordinates the Masterprogramme in Migration and Refugee Law. Her research interest in the field of forced displacement is in Refugee Law with a special interest in researching and understanding refugees’ rights and durable solutions. Besides, She is interested in studies related to children’s rights and protection. 

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.

Stella Effah is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana. Her research interest is on environmental and climate-induced internal displacement (IDPs) and social cohesion, transnational migrants and development, and migration and development. 

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. 

Rebecca Enobong Roberts is a multidisciplinary development economist and a PhD candidate at the Technische Universität Berlin's Habitat Unit. Her core expertise is in community organisation and engagement, public health, public education, and human rights, including informalities (rights to the city, livelihood, and housing), sustainable urbanisation, displacement, urban refugees, forced migration, youth development, public policy analysis, advocacy, and project monitoring and evaluation.

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.

Salvador Forquilha is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IESE), based in Maputo - Mozambique  

Alex Tomas Fusco is a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Sussex in the UK. His research interests include space, camps (theory, built environment/architecture, ethnography), critical border studies, refugees and irregular migration, Greece and the broader Mediterranean region.

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.

Abis Getachew has been working on research related to forced displacement for more than 10 years. Parts of his research include; refugee economies, refugee led organizations, social cohesion in the context of forced displacement and conflict, labour market inclusiveness/discrimination and refugee education. Currently Abis is a researcher at Esurv Consults, a consulting firm specialising in forced migration. 

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. 

Nyima Jadama is a refugee founder and project coordinator with a background in media and activism. Her work is dedicated to understanding and addressing the challenges faced by forcibly displaced individuals and communities.

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.

Aino Korvensyrjä war Gastwissenschaftlerin am CHREN der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, im Rahmen des FFVT-Projekts. Sie promoviert in Sozialwissenschaften (Sozialanthropologie) an der Universität Helsinki, Finnland. Ihre Dissertation untersucht Konflikte um Gesetzesvollzug im deutschen Asyl- und Abschieberegime aus der Perspektive migrantischer Kämpfe.

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. 

Daniel Mekonnen is a Geneva-based Independent Consultant for international human rights law and international refugee law. He maintains continued interest in “Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL),” which is a very important analytical framework in mainstreaming inclusive practices in all areas related to problems of exclusion and marginalisation.

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.

Leon Mwamba Tshimpaka is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the SARChI Chair in the Political Economy of Migration in the SADC (PEMS) at the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn), Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria. His research expertise spans the intersection of intercontinental citizenship and netizenship of African migrants, migration and social sustainability, borders, civil society and democracy, Africa-EU relations, Africa-Canada relations, alternative regional integration and regionalism, and anti-corruption initiatives and development.

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. 

Devora Neumark is a second-generation Holocaust survivor and interdisciplinary researcher, artist, and policy analyst focused on the role of aesthetics and homemaking in the contexts of forced displacement, including those induced by climate change.

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.

Mary Rose Sarausad is a lecturer and coordinator of the LC Research Support Program at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Her main research interests are international labour migration, forced displacement, population movements, and gender and development.

Galina is a post-doctoral researcher at the FernUniversität in Hagen and an associate member of the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft at the University of Bonn. Her research interests focus mainly on the Russian civil society in exile and transnational authoritarianism.

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.

Gizachew Teshome Haile is an assistant professor of Peace and Security Studies at the Department of Civics & Ethical Studies, Gambella University. His research focuses on conflict transformation, peacebuilding, and refugee impacts on demographic and political dynamics, as well as refugee-host community interaction, specifically on localization of the CRRF, migration and social cohesion between host-communities and refugees from the Global South.

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.

Gülşah is currently a PhD student in English Studies at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research focuses on the processes through which language teaching functions as an apparatus of migration governance and refugee students' lives are governed in everyday interactions within schools.

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.

Valentyn is currently a PhD student at Kherson State University and a co-founder of the Ukrainian Center for Romani Studies. His research focuses on the migration experiences of Ukrainian Roma in Europe, exploring their settlement patterns, social integration, and the specific challenges they face.