Experts Database

Current Research:

Dr. Anja van Heelsum is Project Coordinator of EU funded H2020 research consortium Advancing Alternative Migration Governance (See: http://admigov.eu). She's associate professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam, and works together with 13 partner institutes in Greece, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, Lebanon and Ethiopia, to investigate the consequences of migration policies on the ground, with the intention to suggest alternatives.

Expertise:

Dr van Heelsum has been involved with the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) since 1997 and is particularly fascinated by the interplay between migrants motives and migration policies. Her complete personal website provides more info and papers online. With a broad experience as a migration scholar, she worked on a variety of subject, including: migrants aspirations, the refugee “crisis”, refugee reception, local policies on immigrants, ethnicity, political participation of immigrants, migrant organisations, and Islam. Regional specialisations are: the Mediterranean area (Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco) and Africa (Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia). She applies a multidisciplinary approach to migration and ethnic studies, where insights from psychology, political science, sociology and anthropology meet.

International Networks

Dr. van Heelsum has been part of many international research teams, such as the CLIP network, the EURISLAM team and currently the ADMIGOV team. She's a member of the European Network for Immigration, Integration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) and involved in Metropolis International, which is largest international network of researchers, policy makers, and community groups engaged in identifying, understanding, and responding to developments in migration and diversity. For her sabatics she was a visiting researcher in Rabat (Morocco) and Ethiopia (University of Mek'ele and Addis Abeba). Also, she is board member of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Teaching and PhD supervision (2019)

Dr. van Heelsum had set up and is the coordinator of the Minor “Global Migration”, a bachelor program that provides students with fundamental understanding of processes, causes and impacts of migration. Her course is on Migrants Motives and Migration Policy;
She is also involved in thesis supervision within the Research Project Conflict Studies and Governance;
In the past she taught several other subjects.
She is a PhD supervisor in the ADMIGOV project.

Publications

For a full list, see the TAB Publications below, , and for h-index click here. Favorites:

Heelsum, A. van (2016) 'Why migration will continue: aspirations and capabilities of Syrians and Ethiopians with different educational backgrounds', Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(9) 3001-3009.
Kassaye, A., Ashur, I., & van Heelsum, A. (2016) 'The relationship between media discourses and experiences of belonging: Dutch Somali perspectives'. Ethnicities, 16(6), 773-797. DOI: 10.1177/1468796816653627
Heelsum, A. van (2017) 'Aspirations and Frustrations experiences of recent refugees in the Netherlands', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(13) 2137-2150. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2017.1343486

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