Experts Database

Psychologist, PhD candidate in migration in the Comillas Pontifical University

Ahmed Bakry is an architect and urban planner. He got his BSc from Ain Shams University, urban planning and design department (UPD) July 2012. His accumulative ranking was the first upon his colleagues. He then joined the integrated urbanism and sustainable deign master’s program (IUSD), which is a double master’s degree between Ain Shams University and Stuttgart University between 2013 and 2015. During this time he started his work on integrating local ethnic groups in the process of regional planning and bridging the gap between government, planners (practitioners), academia and society.
Bakry began his practical work while he was studying, by participating in several urban competitions. He worked as a freelancer for some architectural, interior, and urban projects. Bakry participated in several student exchange programs related to urbanism and future developments. He attended several conferences and workshops regarding sustainable urbanism and contemporary planning in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Egypt, Canada and U.S. Between 2016 and 2019 he worked as lecturer assistant at UPD, and as researcher at IUSD Cairo in various research projects, all related to regional planning and regional governance.
Bakry started to work on his PhD at the Institute of Geography in April 2019. His research is funded by the Higher ministry of education in Cairo MHESR and the DAAD respectively. In his PhD he is trying to tackle the regional developmental inequalities in the global south for the border regions. His work is based on theories of regional planning, peripheral regions, and cross-border communities. By comparing the South Egyptian border region with EU border areas, he aims do develop an analytical framework that enables a better understanding of planning processes in cross-border regions.

Marie-Clare Balaam is a senior research associate in the Research in Childbirth and Health Unit (REACH) at UCLan. Her current research focuses on maternity care and social support for marginalised women with a particular focus on migrant women’s experiences of maternity care and childbirth in the UK and Europe.

Jay Balagna (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in the Community-Partnered Policy and Action stream at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy researcher at RAND. His research interests include disaster studies, disaster risk reduction and creation, the influence of climate change on disasters, climate-related and post-disaster migration, and the social determinants of health.

Prior to joining Pardee RAND, Balagna was a wildland firefighter in Nevada and Montana, an emergency medical technician in Los Angeles, and a political journalist working in the United States and Chile. He has an M.P.H. from Emory University and a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Former Director, Mediterranean Migration Observatory;
External Expert/ External Researcher, Danube University, Krems;
External Expert, ICMPD;
Expert and Expert Evaluator, DG Migration and H2020, European Commission.

Osman Balkan is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and Senior Fellow at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the politics of migration, race/ethnicity, and citizenship in Western Europe and the Middle East. His first book project, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe explores how minority communities manage and make sense of death and dying in countries where they face structural barriers to full citizenship.

Researcher in climate change and migration law. Also working in sociolegal studies, queer theory and asylum.