Experts Database

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.

Zubia Willmann-Robleda (Ph.D.) is currently working as a researcher at the Centre for Intercultural Communication (SIK) at VID Specialised University, Stavanger, Norway. She has experience working on research projects on asylum seekers’ experiences of the asylum and resettlement system, labour market participation of newly arrived refugees, on the protection needs of newly arrived refugees from domestic violence and honour-related violence and women and girls on the move in the Balkans among others. Willmann-Robleda also teaches and supervises at bachelor and master level on topics related to migration, intercultural relations and competence, religion and migration, social sciences, qualitative methods, and academic writing. Her research interests are primarily within the fields of migration, gender, and religion. Willmann-Robleda is particularly interested in asylum systems, bordering practices, and state violence towards migrants, as well as issues related to migrant inclusion/exclusion, discrimination, and gender-related issues in migration.

Mgr. Martina Wilsch, PhD. works as a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on migration, care, transnationalism, transnational family practices, gender, and migrant integration into society. As a researcher, she collaborated on many research projects at the national and international levels. She has long cooperated with the Migration Policy Group in Brussels (as national coordinator and member of the editorial board of the European website on integration, MIPEX research), as well as with other Slovak and international organizations active in the field of human and women's rights, migration, integration, and gender. Her recent research includes transnational family practices and social reproduction in migrant families in Slovakia.

I am a PhD candidate in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh's School of Divinity. My current research analyses the Book of Acts through the lens of migration studies (looking at how the text describes migration and is the product of ancient migration). I have also been involved in refugee and asylum support in the third sector for over a decade, in both Greece and the UK. I am also a part-time lecturer in Bible and Theology at Tilsley College in Motherwell.

Stacey Wilson-Forsberg is Associate Professor in the Human Rights and Human Diversity program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada and the current Director of the Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa. Stacey has several SSHRC-funded research projects underway which explore the educational and labour market transitions of African immigrant and refugee youth in Canada. She is also co-leading a SSHRC-funded study and book called "Life in Unintended Destinations: Stories of Migrants Stranded en route to the EU and North America.

Amanda's research interests include comparative work on global cities and diversity; materialities, civilities, and 'sensibilities' of urban life; multiculturalism and 'lived diversity' (especially 'everyday multiculturalism'); race and interethnic relations; social cohesion & integration; cultural attachments to and formations of place, especially in relation to multicultural cities; national and cultural identities; diasporic, transnational and migrant communities and migration more generally; settlement experiences of asylum seekers and refugees; labour mobility in and from Asia; and experiences of low wage migrant labourers in Australia and Asia.

Amanda has held a number of large Australian Research Council Grants and has extensive experience in advising and undertaking commissioned research for government on issues of diversity and strategies to tackle racism. Amanda has supervised numerous PhD projects on topics surrounding everyday multiculturalism, transnational and diasporic communities, global cities, and migrant settlement

Dr. Alexander W. Wiseman has more than 25 years of professional experience working with government education departments, university-based teacher education programs, community-based professional development for teachers, and as a classroom teacher in both the U.S. and East Asia. Dr. Wiseman examines and informs educational policy development, leads strategic planning workshops, provides evidence-based training programs, speaks internationally and presents extensively in the areas of refugee and forced im/migrant education, evidence-based decision-making, teacher preparation and professional development, strategic planning, system assessment and reform, education policy, change management, equitable educational access for girls and boys, institutional capacity building, school-to-work transition, and civic education. Dr. Wiseman's research uses large-scale education datasets on math and science education, information and communication technology (ICT), teacher preparation, professional development and curriculum as well as school principal's instructional leadership activity. He serves on the editorial board of Educational Administration Quarterly and Educational Researcher and is the author or editor of more than 100 articles, chapters, and books. He is the series editor of the volume series, International Perspectives on Education and Society, and the senior editor of the journal, FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education.

Arkadiusz Wiśniowski is a Senior Lecturer in Social Statistics, University of Manchester, UK. His interests are in integrating traditional and new forms of data to better measure populations, especially international migration. He also has general interest in statistical modelling and forecasting.