Experts Database

I currently work at Centre Maurice Halbwachs (École Normale Supérieure) as a 'Chercheuse Contractuelle'. I am also one of the Editorial Managers at 'Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism'. I graduated with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh in 2016. My PhD thesis explored the different forms of Kurdishness in Turkey with regards to place, the language use, and state rhetoric. My book based on this thesis (Customized Forms of Kurdishness in Turkey: State Rhetoric, Locality, and Language Use) was published in 2018 by Lexington Books. My postdoctoral research aims to unpack how whiteness is (re-)constructed intersectionally within the second-generation immigrants from Turkey. My research interests are belonging, intersectionality, transnationalism, and Turkey. I was also a Young Visiting Researcher funded by the Campus France Fellowship at Centre Nantais de Sociologie and a Fellow at Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen in Germany. To date, I have taught various courses in Sociology at all levels at Istanbul Okan University and the University of Edinburgh.

I'm a PhD student at Trent University, Canada with a research focus on postpartum experiences of Ghanaian immigrant women moms in Ontario. I depart from damage- and deficit-based approaches, conscientizing the new moms to draw on the strength of their diasporic communities and the wisdom of traditional Ghanaian practices to improve their postpartum mental health experiences. My research interest areas are migrant women's health, gender and labour migration, and migration policy development. I hold MSc. Global Health from Uppsala University (Sweden), M.A. Social Protection from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and BSc. Physiotherapy from University of Ghana. My past research explored the labour market experiences of Ghanaian family migrant women in Germany.

Is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of the research group PRISMA UKRAÏNA: War, Migration and Memory at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Prior to this, she was a fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg, University of Jena. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since 2020 and a professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University. In 2021 a visiting lecturer at the University of Basel. In 2016–2020 Research Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, where she developed a digital atlas of social changes in Ukraine after Euromaidan.

Senior Lecturer

My research and expertise concern political representation of migrants, citizenship and belongings, forced migrations, work exploitation and access to decent housing for migrants.
I have obtained a PhD in Political Sociology at the University of Padua, Italy. The focus of my research project was the political integration of migrants and refugees in Italy and the United Kingdom. During my PhD I held also a residential visiting positions at the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom (2014-2015).
Here you can find my publications https://unipd.academia.edu/EriseldaShkopi

Shahar Shoham is a doctoral candidate in Global and Area Studies at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. Her ethnographic research focuses on work migration from Thailand to the agriculture sector in Israel, while addressing issues of return migration, migration regimes, migrants' unions and labor rights struggles, visual imaginaries and archives of mobilities and identities of the people on the move and their communities.
Shoham holds a double major B.A in Philosophy and East Asia Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an M.A in Global Studies from Humboldt University. She is a former scholarship holder from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung in Germany. Shoham is currently a visiting research fellow in the research project “TraffLab: Labor Perspectives to Human Trafficking” (ERC) in the law faculty of Tel Aviv University. She also co-initiated a research project focusing on the trajectories of Eritrean refugees who ‘voluntary’ departed Israel to Rwanda and found refuge in Europe. Previously Shoham worked as the manager of the migrant and refuges department in the NGO “Physicians for Human Rights-Israel”.

Melissa Siegel is a Professor of Migration Studies and Head of Migration Studies at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT where she manages several migration research projects, coordinates the Migration Studies Specialization as part of the Master’s Program in Public Policy and Human Development and formerly headed the Migration Management Diploma Program. She is Co-Director of the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE). She currently holds the Chair of the UNU Migration Network and is a Research Associate at the Center on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. She is also on the advisory board of the Migration Policy Center, EUI and was formerly on the board of the Hague Process on Refugees and Migration. She has done visiting research fellowships at Harvard University, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the University of Oxford. She has advised, worked on or headed projects for several governments and international organisations. She is also regularly involved in migration-related trainings/capacity building for governments and international organizations as well as teaching at the Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD level. She has also given advice at the United Nations and European Commission on migration issues. Her main research interests lie in the causes and consequences of migration with a strong emphasis on the linkages between migration and development.