Experts Database

Dr John van Kooy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. He is a researcher, policy analyst, and evaluation practitioner with over 15 years of experience working in communities across Australia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. John completed a PhD with the Migration and Inclusion Centre at Monash University in 2022. His dissertation focused on the neighbourhood conditions for refugee settlement in Australia, using BNLA data to examine the relationships between social connections and the ’three Es’ of employment, education, and English language. He has published numerous reports and articles on issues of settlement, integration, inclusion and participation of migrants and refugees.

Christof Van Mol is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Tilburg University and Associated Researcher at the Centre for Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS, University of Antwerp) and the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI, Catholic University Milan). Together with Elif Keskiner (University of Amsterdam), Jens Schneider (University of Osnabrück), Christine Lang (Max-Planck Institute-MMG) and Nicolai Netz (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies), he coordinates an IMISCOE Standing Committee on Education and Social Inequality.

Christof Van Mol obtained a MA in History (University of Antwerp, Belgium, 2006), an international MA in Migration Studies (University of Valencia, Spain & Lille Catholic University, France, 2008), and a PhD in Sociology (University of Antwerp, Belgium, 2013). After completing his PhD, he joined the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI, the Hague), first as a postdoctoral researcher, from 2015 onwards as senior researcher. In November 2017 he joined the Department of Sociology of Tilburg University.

Christof Van Mol's main thematic interests are international migration processes, patterns, and outcomes, with a specific focus on intra-European mobility flows. Methodologically, he is interested in innovative forms of mixed-method research and online survey methodology.

Ricky van Oers is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Law and Migration Law with a specific interest in the topic of 'Migrant inclusion: social justice, information and communication'. She defended her PhD research Deserving Citizenship. Citizenship Tests in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK (Brill, 2014) at the Radboud University in 2013. In 2014, the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation awarded her one of five Research Prizes.

Ricky van Oers studied law at Radboud University and the Université Paris Descartes. Since 1 April 2021, Van Oers is Professor of Immigrant inclusion & law (20%) at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

Sanne is a social scientist interested in intergroup conflict, migration attitudes, politics, public opinion and voting behaviour. She in an expert in data analysis using (conjoint) experiments, meta-analyses, and survey data. Sanne is completing her PhD in political science at the University of Amsterdam, where she researched minority voting and political representation. Her current research focuses on discrimination against Muslim, Black and Roma minorities by employers, landlords, and childcare facilitators and the resultant impact on the well-being and identification of these minorities. This research is part of the Horizon 2020 project EqualStrength. Her previous work has been published in journals such as Public Integrity, Legislative Studies, Electoral Studies, and Acta Politica.

Mark M.A.C. van Ostaijen is as Assistant Professor affiliated to the Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS/ ESSB) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He works as Managing Director of the LDE Centre Governance of Migration and Diversity.

In his previous research project, SmartUrbI, granted by NWO Urban Europe he studied how 'smart urban intermediaries' make a difference in neighborhoods of Amsterdam, Glasgow, Birmingham and Copenhagen. Before he started at Tilburg University, Mark worked as lecturer and PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and at the Netherlands School of Public Administration (NSOB).

In 2013, together with prof. dr. Godfried Engbersen and Peter Scholten, he received a NWO Urban Europe Research Grant on the research project ‘IMAGINATION’ which resulted in his PhD dissertation 'Worlds between words'Opent extern. This dissertation was awarded as ‘Best PhD thesis’ by the Erasmus Graduate School (2017).

During his PhD research he was one of the founders and chairman of the IMISCOE PhD network, an Organizing Committee Member of the Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) conference in Leicester (UK) and a visiting doctoral research fellow at De Montfort University (UK).

Currently, he is an engaged public scholar, which resulted in his book ‘Wij zijn onsOpent extern. Een kleine sociologie van grote denkers’ (Vantilt, 2018, 3th edition), a Committee Member of the Colloquium Critical and Interpretive Public Administration at the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), Editorial Board Member of academic journal Beleid & Maatschappij and permanent author for the journal Sociologie Magazine

Lore Van Praag is the head of the Centre for Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Antwerp. She obtained a Master and PhD in Sociology at Ghent University. Her past research project focused on gendered community effects on mental health outcomes and interethnic relations in schools, processes of tracking/streaming, discrimination, educational achievement, social support, early school leaving, educational policies, primary and secondary education, grounded theory and ethnography. She taught the courses ‘Introduction in Sociology’ (Bachelor course) and ‘Sociology of Education’ (Master course) (Ghent University, 2014) and is now currently teaching ‘Introduction in Anthropology’, ‘Interdisciplinary perspectives on migration and integration’ (bachelor courses, University of Antwerp, 2018- ongoing). She has gained a lot of research expertise in coordinating research projects, such as the Validiv project on multilingualism in primary schools in Flanders (SBO project) and the RESL.Eu on Early School Leavers in Europe (FP7). She is part of the BELSPO funded MIGRADAPT project on migration aspirations and climate change in Morocco, the H2020 MICADO project on newcomer integration across Europe using co-creative research methods, the H2020 PERCEPTIONS project on the impact of novel technologies, social media, and perceptions in countries abroad on migration flows and the security of the EU.

Micheline van Riemsdijk is an Associate Professor of Geography at Uppsala University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her research agenda is broadly defined by international and global governance of migration, skilled labor migration, and the social integration of highly skilled migrants and refugees. She received a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Colorado and an M.A. degree in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures from the University of Minnesota. Her research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Research Council of Norway, and the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She is the principal editor of Rethinking International Skilled Migration (edited with Qingfang Wang, Routledge 2017) and she edited a special issue with Marion Panizzon on multi-level governance of migration in times of crisis for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2018). Van Riemsdijk is also the lead organizer of two workshop sessions on the Labor market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, Germany and The Netherlands, funded by the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.