Experts Database

Josepha Wessels is a visual anthropologist/human geographer, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Faculty of Culture and Society at Malmö University. She teaches at the MA degree course on Communication for Development (ComDev). She has over 25 years of experience of travelling and working in the MENA region and is currently carrying out research on Syrian Refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden and Academia and cultural production as postmigrant fields in Sweden
See further: https://mau.se/en/persons/josepha.wessels/

Bob White is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal. His current research is focused on intercultural policy and practice in various settings : intercultural cities, intercultural policy frameworks and civic-based forms of belonging. As the director of the Laboratory for Research on Intercultural Relations (LABRRI), his most recent project involves an in-depth ethnographic study of intercultural dynamics and policies in Montreal, Québec.

Rebecca Wickes is the Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. She is an Associate Professor and Head of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University.

Her research focusses on demographic changes in urban communities and their influence on social cohesion and the concentration of social problems. She is the lead investigator of the Australian Community Capacity Study, a multi-million, multi-site, longitudinal study of urban neighbourhoods.

Professor Rebecca Wickes’ research focuses on neighbourhood social processes and their effects on crime and other social problems in Australia. She takes an interdisciplinary approach and is the lead investigator on the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS) – a multi-million-dollar project largely funded by the Australian Research Council and an internationally leading longitudinal study of the concentration of social problems in residential communities. Rebecca is also interested in the safety and inclusion of immigrants in Australia and is involved in ground-breaking projects that examine migrant women’s safety in the home, in the community and in the workplace.

Prior to joining Griffith, Rebecca was the Founding Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC), established in 2018 at Monash University. In this capacity she worked with local governments, non-government organisations and state governments to identify programs and pathways that enhance social, economic and cultural inclusion in urban and regional communities. She was also the Convenor of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University from 2018 to 2021.

Susanne Willers is a trained sociologist; she holds a Master in Sociology and a Doctoral degree in Social and Political Science. Until recently she was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and collaborator of the Seminar on Internal Displacement, Migration, Exile and Return (SUDIMER) of the same university, working on a project analysing the access to refugee protection and social rights of Central American Women in Mexico. Currently she is working on a project about the impact of the COVID pandemic on transnational families in Germany. Her main research interests are transnational migration, gender, violence and transnational families.

Leah Williams Veazey is ARC DECRA Research Fellow in the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Sydney. She is the author of the award-winning book Migrant Mothers in the Digital Age (2021, Routledge) and has published widely in the areas of migration, parenthood, digital cultures, and experiences of health and healthcare. Her research uses qualitative methods, most commonly in-depth interviews, to explore contemporary social experiences, with a focus on the intersections of health, mobility and relational sociology.

Leah's current research, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) entitled "Future-proofing Australia's Care Economy", explores the intersections of work, migration and care in the lives of healthcare workers and healthcare students. Specifically, the project explores how healthcare workers’ family relationships and informal care responsibilities shape their migration decisions, experiences in the workplace and plans for the future.

Leah co-convenes The Australian Sociological Association’s Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism Thematic Group, and co-leads the Migration, Im/mobility and Belonging Research Theme at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. She is Associate Editor at the Australian Journal of Social Issues, and an Associate Investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Leah completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Sydney, a qualitative study of migrant mothers and their online communities in Australia, supervised by Associate Professor Catriona Elder and Professor Susan Goodwin. Since then, she has taught across the Discipline of Sociology & Criminology and the School for Public Health, and has worked on a number of research projects, including an ARC-funded project on the history of sociology, led by Associate Professor Fran Collyer, and an NHRMC-funded project on the experiences of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, led by Professors Lyn Gilbert and Alex Broom. Her recent projects include experiences of contemporary cancer care, the social life of death, and the social dimensions of antimicrobial resistance.

Abigail Fisher Williamson researches and teaches on immigration policy, health policy, urban politics, and civic engagement. Her book Welcoming New Americans? Local Governments and Immigrant Incorporation (University of Chicago Press, 2018) explains why cities welcome immigrants and how these efforts both promote and restrict incorporation. She is a co-editor of The Politics of New Immigrant Destinations: Transatlantic Perspectives (Temple University Press, 2017). She works with an interdisciplinary team of scholars on the AmeRicans' Conceptions of Health Equity Study (ARCHES), which examines how people form and change their understandings of whose health deserves society's attention and investment. Her research has received funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ruth Landes Memorial Fund, and Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS).

From 1998-2001, Professor Williamson worked for the Eurasia Foundation in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, ultimately as Associate Country Director for the Foundation’s Tbilisi, Georgia office. From 2003-2005, she served as a Research Associate and then as Associate Director of the Saguaro Seminar for Civic Engagement at Harvard’s Kennedy School.