Experts Database

I am Head of Research at the Migration Policy Group, Brussels, Belgium. Previously, I worked as policy officer/consultant for the European Commission (DG Employment) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and as researcher for the Eindhoven University of Technology. I hold a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and University of Milan-Bicocca (joint degree). My research interests include comparative integration policies (in particular, in the EU), labour market integration of migrants (e.g. migrant entrepreneurship), and social network analysis.

Pedro Ponte e Sousa is a PhD candidate in Global Studies at the Department of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, New University of Lisbon (Portugal), since 2015. He is also researcher of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI) since 2016.
In his PhD thesis he analyses the interactions between globalization, foreign policy, and global governance in Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece), under the supervision of Nuno Severiano Teixeira (FCSH-UNL, IPRI).
He holds a MA in History, International Relations, and Cooperation by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, obtained in 2015, with a thesis on political parties’ cleavages in contemporary Portuguese foreign policy. He also holds a BA in Languages and International Relations from the same institution, since 2013.
His main research interests include: foreign, security, and defense policy; Foreign Policy Analysis; diplomacy; (political) globalization; global governance; Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece).
He has over ten published research articles and book chapters and delivered dozens of presentations on these topics in national and international conferences.
He is member of international scientific organizations as UACES (University Association for Contemporary European Studies) and IAPSS (International Association for Political Science Students).

Abu Saleh Mohammad Sowad is an FRQSC doctoral candidate in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University, Montreal. His research focuses on the constructions of diasporic masculinities among Bangladeshi men in Canada. He is also working as a research professional in the Research Chair on Gambling at Concordia University, Montreal, where he leads the research team on gender and gambling. Previously, he obtained an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where his thesis focused on the aftereffect of migration on the deconstruction of masculinities among Bangladeshi immigrant men in the United Kingdom. He also has an MSS and a BSS degree in Women and Gender studies from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has been working as a faculty member in the Department of Women and Gender Studies, University of Dhaka, since 2014 and is currently on study leave. He also has extensive experience workings as a consultant with various INGOs like ActionAid Bangladesh, NETZ Bangladesh, OXFAM and USAID/Bangladesh.

Anna Spiegel is a research associate at the Research and Teaching Unit on Economics and Work at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University. She has carried out research on transnational mobility of people and knowledge in different world regions. In her research on translocal life worlds of female Bolivian migrants in the Global City Buenos Aires she concentrated on dance as a translocal practice. As a researcher in the VW funded Project “Negotiating Development: Translocal Gendered Spaces in Muslim Societies” and in her doctoral thesis she focused on the transnational negotiations of Women’s and Human Rights in Malaysia in the context of Islamisation. In her current research she works on the ambivalences and paradoxes of practiced elite cosmopolitanisms of executive expatriates employed in transnational corporations and their new forms of working, belonging and dwelling.

Her main research interests are: transnationalization and mobility, skilled and non-skilled migration, global negotiations of knowledge, global ethnography, belonging, transience

Dr Joy Spiliopoulos joined the SAPPHIRE research group, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Leicester, UK, in June 2023. She is part of the NIHR funded Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration as a Research Associate for the theme: 'Enhancing cultures of safety'. She is a Visiting Fellow for the Centre of Health Innovation, Leadership and Learning (CHILL) at the Nottingham University Business School, UK.
Her background is in Applied Social Science/Social Work and she holds a PhD from the Department of Applied Social Science (now Department of Sociology), Lancaster University.
She has worked for academic institutions in the UK (Lancaster University, University of Leicester and Sheffield College) and China (University of Nottingham Ningbo China, and Zhejiang University) and taught in the subject areas of sociology, international relations, criminology, gender studies.
She has worked on a number of collaborative projects funded by NGOs and government bodies (NIHR, ESRC, DFID, Oxfam, UK Home Office, local authority funded projects). She recently completed two funded projects on the effects of 'Brexit' on the retention and recruitment of migrant NHS nurses; and on returnee Filipino nurses. The collaborative project she led, 'Retention and recruitment of migrant nurses post-Brexit', has received international media attention, including BBC Radio Nottingham interview and features in television, newspaper, think tanks and internet blogs in the USA, China, Singapore, the UK and other European countries, also from bodies such as the Royal College of Nursing (Nursing Standard journal), and others. Joy's research focuses on issues of migration, gender, racism, exploitation and discrimination, UK race relations, social and health inequalities, adult social care, and others, using primarily feminist theory (intersectionality, critical feminist theory). Much of her work has focused on the positioning of nurses, care workers and domestic workers, in the NHS and the social care sector, in the UK and elsewhere (the Philippines), and more recently on the retention and recruitment of migrant nurses post-Brexit. She has a particular interest in social impact, public engagement and co-creation with stakeholders.

Dr. Laura Stielike is member of the research group “The Production of Knowledge on Migration” at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrueck. Her current research project explores the trend to use big data for the analysis and governance of international migration. In 2016, she completed her doctoral dissertation on the apparatus of migration and development with a focus on Cameroonian migrants in Germany.

Andrea Strutz, PD Dr., is Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War and a lecturer at the University of Graz.

Her research fields include historical migration studies, exile history, Jewish history and displacement, memory studies, National Socialism and restitution matters, biographical studies, theoretical and methodological questions of oral and video history.
Among other topics, Andrea Strutz researched life stories of Jewish displaced persons from Austria in the USA and analyzed the transformation and transmission of memories to the second and third generations. Her postdoctoral project examined the history of Austrian migration to Canada between 1890 and the 1960s, with a particular focus on Jewish immigration. She has widely published in the field of historical migration research, the history of exile (esp. in Canada), and the treatment of victims of National Socialism. She is co-producer of the video documentary "continental divide. divided lives" about memories and narratives in families of Austrian-Jewish displaced persons in New York.

She serves as Network Chair of the Oral History and Life Stories Network of the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the “Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen – BIOS”.
Since 2023, she is member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Canadian Studies (ZKS). From 2017 to 2023, she was head of the History Section of the Gesellschaft für Kanadastudien (GKS) | Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries.
She is also co-speaker of the PhD program „Migration − Diversity − Global Societies“ at the University of Graz.