Fiona-Katharina Seiger
Production (currently on leave)
Fiona is a sociologist by training who worked with women, children, and youth in Japan and the Philippines. She holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore. Her education and research career have brought Fiona to Vienna, Paris, Kyoto, Tokyo, Manila, Singapore, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and to the North of Italy. Consequently, she developed a strong desire to build bridges and speak across the regional and linguistic cocoons in which academic research takes place and discussions take shape. To reach a wider audience and make academic research more accessible, Fiona initiated The IMISCOE Migration Podcast. Since April 2023, she works to provide evidence for policy-making.
Kate Dearden
Production
Kate works as a project coordinator for Population Europe in Berlin, where she focuses on dissemination and communication of research findings related to migration and demography. Before that, she worked at IOM's Migration Data Centre (GMDAC) predominantly on the Missing Migrants Project, for which she worked to document and to raise awareness and about the risks faced by migrants on irregularized migrant journeys through quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. She has volunteered, studied and worked on the topic of migration since 2008 at the local/national levels in Canada, India, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland and Germany. She has an academic background in sociology and political science and is happy bringing together and working across policy, academic and civil society spheres.
Milena Belloni
Team & Programming Coordinator
Milena is an ethnographer specialised in migration and refugee studies, currently working as Assistant Research Professor at the University of Antwerp. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Italy, Belgium and Holland. Her research mainly concerns refugees’ migration dynamics and inclusion pathways, transnational refugee families, migrant smuggling, protracted displacement in Europe and in the Global South, home and housing studies, and ethnographic methods. She published in several international peer reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Global Networks. Her monographic study on the migration of Eritreans to Europe, The Big Gamble, is published by the University of California Press (2019).
She holds a PhD from the University of Trento. In 2016 her thesis “Cosmologies of Destinations: roots and routes of Eritrean forced migration towards Europe” won the Maria Baganha IMISCOE 2016 Award for the best doctoral dissertation in migration studies.
https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/staff/milena-belloni/
https://unitn.academia.edu/MilenaBelloni
Mark Marvin Kadigo
Team & Programming Coordinator
Mark is a Teaching and Research Assistant and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Forestry and a Master of Science in Development Evaluation and Management. The broad focus of his doctoral research is on the migration and sustainable development nexus. He is currently working on several studies on refugees and host communities in Uganda (and Ethiopia). He is investigating the socio-economic dynamics within a refugee hosting context, and the related outcomes. Specifically, with his research, he aims to contribute to the understanding of the socio-economic effects of hosting refugees, and the attitudes and perceptions in refugee-hosting contexts. Mark is also involved in teaching and service delivery. He contributes to a diverse range of courses which are both quantitatively and qualitatively oriented. He joined the IMISCOE podcast team, because of the opportunity to support the sharing of migration and development information to a broader audience.
Roos Derrix
Team & Programming Coordinator
Roos Derrix is a FWO PhD researcher at the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp. She holds a BA in Journalism and MA degrees in International Relations and in Development Studies. In her doctoral research, she focuses on the refugee policy process in Uganda, as there is limited understanding of how these policies are shaped and managed in countries of first asylum. Her research aims to understand the effects of political interactions at the international, national, and local level on national refugee policies and their implementation. Earlier, for her MA theses, she wrote on the humanitarian-development nexus in Uganda and diaspora diplomacy between India and the USA. She decided to join the podcast team as she wants to contribute to making academic knowledge more accessible to a wider public.
Asya Pisarevskaya
Financial Administration & Engagement
Asya Pisarevskaya is an Assistant Professor in Migration ad Diversity Governance at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She studies governance of migration-related diversities and migrant integration in European cities. She is committed to popularization migration studies and aims to make scientific findings more accessible for broader public. She was involved in creation of the Migration Research Hub, and a number of other practice-oriented projects, such as integrationpractices.eu and anti-discrimination project for the city of Rotterdam. Asya has obtained her PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research at the University of Milan and the University of Turin (Italy).
Amanda Paz Alencar
Interviews
Amanda is a digital migration scholar specialized in the study of media and social media in Europe and Latin America, with a focus on how communication technologies are shaping mobility and sociocultural integration processes of (forced) migrants. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Vice Chair of the Intercultural Communication Division within the International Communication Association (ICA). Amanda was a Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre (Oxford University) and Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Amsterdam. She has guest edited two special issues in the (open-access) peer-reviewed journals International Communication Gazette and Media and Communication on the intersections between media, communication and forced migration processes.
https://amandaalencar.com/
https://www.eur.nl/en/people/amanda-paz-alencar
Liberty Chee
Interviews
Liberty Chee is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Ca Foscari University of Venice. Her research examines domestic work from the interdisciplinary lenses of migration studies, feminist political economy and international relations theory. Her current project examines knowledge production about domestic work in the context of the International Labour Organization. She approaches this inquiry through the lenses of feminist science studies. At the moment she is also working to complete her book manuscript on private employment agencies that recruit, train and deploy migrant domestic workers in Southeast Asia. This project examines the ‘market logic’ of these agencies as non-state actors in migration governance.
Silindile Mlilo
Interviews
Silindile Nanzile Mlilo is a Project Manager and Doctoral Researcher at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Silindile has over 8 years of experience in extensive research and project management in both academia and the NGO sector. In her role as Project Manager at ACMS, Silindile is responsible for the management and monitoring of the Xenowatch project. Silindile has earned a Bachelor of Social Work, and an MA in Human Rights from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, respectively. She followed this by completing a two-year mobility Erasmus Mundus MA in Advanced Development in Social Work, from the University of Lincoln, Aalborg University, Instituto Superior de Ciencias Sociais e Politicas-Universidade De Lisboa and Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense. Her current research project “Political subjectivities in post-colonial communities: Identity and belonging among Botswana’s non–Tswana migrant descendants” focuses on themes such as citizenship, belonging, and identity for migrant descendants in Africa.
Louise Ryan
Interviews
Louise Ryan is Senior Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities research centre at London Metropolitan University. Over the last 20 years, she has published a large body of work on migration, drawing upon varied research methods. She is a pioneer in the field of qualitative social network analysis. She was awarded with the Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences for her contribution to migration research in 2015. Her most recent books are: Social Networks and Migration (published by Policy Press, 2023) and Revisiting Migrant Networks (co-edited with Keskiner and Eve, Springer, 2022). Louise is currently working on two projects - an oral history with migrant nurses in Britain's National Health Service and a longitudinal project with recently arrived Afghan refugees in London.
Rob Sharp
Interviews
Dr Rob Sharp is a Lecturer in Media and Journalism at the University of Sussex. His work is published or forthcoming in Journalism Studies, Media War and Conflict and the International Communication Gazette with a book, Refugee Voices: Performativity and the Struggle for Recognition under advanced contract with Routledge. He is currently researching mediated solidarity in relation to Ukraine, funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust. He studied for his PhD in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to this, he was a journalist for organisations including the Independent (UK) and Guardian Media Group (UK).
Itzel Eguiluz
Interviews
Itzel Eguiluz's most recent position was as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Economic Researches Institute, UNAM. She completed her doctoral studies in International Migration and Social Integration at the Complutense University of Madrid and has a Master in Health Sciences degree from the National Institute of Public Health. Her main research topics are migration, global health, emerging adulthood, and qualitative research. She collaborated as a consultant with UNHCR, the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, and Partners in Health, among others. She has been a Global Health and Methods professor at the Medicine and Health Sciences School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey. Dr Eguiluz was a member of the First Parliament of Women in Mexico City, where she presided over the Health Commission. Also, she is an Associate Editor for the Journal on Migration and Health, a member of the Editorial Board of Emerging Adulthood, and a member of the Editorial Committee of Diarios del Terruño’
Sara Hannafin
Interviews
Sara is Assistant Professor in Geography and Education at the University of Limerick where she teaches modules in human geography on a newly developed undergraduate geography course. Her research interest is in Irish-British migrations and how migration impacts on identity, belonging and emotional engagement with place. In particular, her work has focused on the experiences of the children of the Irish in Britain and their return migration to Ireland. More recent research has explored the impact of the pandemic related travel restrictions on the Irish in Britain and the British in Ireland.
Samanwita Paul
Interviews
Samanwita is a Doctoral Student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research centers on the Displacement and Politics of Representation of the Rohingya women refugees in India. Her work centers around the effect of displacement on refugee women’s agency and their participation in the politics of their representation. Prior to this she has done her M.A and M.Phil. in Geography. For her M.Phil. she wrote a minor thesis on the Dialectics of Recognition and Redistribution affecting Women’s Political Participation in Grassroots democracy in India. She has worked extensively on issues pertaining to forced migrants in various refugee focused and refugee-led organizations. She has been a part of several teams for field research and policy formulation pertaining to refugee groups. Her areas of interest include Feminist Studies, Political Geography and Refugee Studies.
Yixin Zhang
Interviews
Yixin Zhang is a PhD student at the Population Research Center, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research interests include migrants' community participation, social integration, internal migrants in China, and social capital. She has completed a MPhil degree in philosophy and religion. Recently, she published the article entitled "Migrants' community participation and social integration in urban areas: A scoping review" focused on the characteristics of both international and internal migrants' social integration when participating in community activities.
Special Thanks
Special thanks to Lou Janssen Dangzalan, Cathrine Talleraas , Roger Norum , and Jørgen Carling for their valuable input during the inception phase of the project. We also would like to thank Jolynna Sinanan, Jamie Coates , and Mamta Sachan Kumar for their work on the initial 3 seasons of The IMISCOE Migration Podcast.