Experts Database

Currently Head of Asylum Strategy & International in the UK Government. Over five years' experience in immigration policy development and analysis, legislation, refugee/asylum law and rights (including at EU level), and international/multilateral affairs (representing the UK at IGC, GDISC, and G7 Roma-Lyon Group meetings). I have previously worked at UNODC, covering Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling. My Master's thesis covered policy approaches to the 2015 migrant crisis.

Rob McNeil is a Researcher for COMPAS examining the social environments from which news stories and narratives about migration and migrants emerge; how media debate affects migration policy decisions (and vice versa); and how information gaps affect the way these issues are discussed. He lectures on migration and the media for the MSc in Migration Studies.
Rob is also the Deputy Director and Head of Media and Communications at the Migration Observatory. He was part of the team who launched the Migration Observatory in 2011 and, since then, has been working to embed Migration Observatory analysis in public debates. He is responsible for public relations strategy, parliamentary and community outreach and news and commentary work.
Rob is a former journalist and joined COMPAS in November 2010 after two years as the Media Director for the US environmental organisation Conservation International. Previously he worked as PR manager for Oxfam GB, Senior Press Officer for WWF-UK and as a journalist for a range of publications including the Evening Standard, The Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, Red, Time Out and BBC Wildlife.

Dr. Katie McQuillan works as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Trinity Centre for Global Health. REFUGE-ED is funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, and is being conducted across seven European countries. The goal of the project is identify, implement, and evaluate existing evidence-based interventions for children and young people who are refugees, asylum seekers, or separated minors. In particular, we are interested in practices that can be implemented in formal and non-formal educational settings to promote inclusion, mental health, sense of belonging, and academic achievement. Further, a key feature of the project is it's co-design with children, families, teachers, practitioners, policymakers and other relevant stakeholders.

She is also a chartered psychologist and both works in the Irish Institute of Emotion Focused Therapy and in the National Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture.

Historically, she has published in the areas of complex post-traumatic stress disorder among homeless adults as well as in HIV healthcare.

MEDA Mouoboum Marc is a Research Assistant at the Higher Institute of Population Sciences (Burkina Faso). He is the thematic manager for "Migration, Poverty and Inequalities" of the Migration for Equality and Development Project (MIDEQ) since 2019. He holds a PhD degree in sociology from the University Joseph KI-ZERBO (Burkina Faso) on migration of Dagara populations from Burkina Faso to Southern Ghana in the context of climate change.MEDA Mouoboum Marc has various research experiences and expertise on migrations, agriculture-livestock integration in the context of climate change, perceptions of climate change, but also on conflict analysis.

Tamara Megaw has a Master of Arts in Development Studies (Critical Social Policy) from the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague. She works at the University for Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS-ISF) on research addressing effectiveness of development aid and social inclusion. From 2017-2021, Tamara conducted applied research about women’s empowerment in refugee protection programs through UTS-ISF’s partnership with Act for Peace, The Border Consortium and OfERR. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney’s Southeast Asian Centre (SSEAC) on community-led protection approaches for forcibly displaced sexual and gender minorities in Southeast Asia.

Tamara is an experienced qualitative researcher and evaluator with strengths in participatory methods and co-design for applied research. She has built research partnerships with Australian Pacific Climate Partnership, Australian Volunteers International, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Plan Australia, Plan Indonesia, Plan Asia-Pacific, WaterAid Timor-Leste, and World Vision Bangladesh. She has experience working in diverse contexts across Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Pacific, and specialises in Indonesia.

Ashley is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Susanne Melde is a Senior Analyst at the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Berlin, Germany. Her main areas of work are migration governance and knowledge management of understanding migration data.

Ms. Melde has 12 years of experience in working on migration research and policy at IOM. From 2014 to 2017 she has managed a major EU-funded research project on migration as an adaptation strategy to environmental and climate change in 6 pilot countries. Currently she coordinates the Global Migration Data Portal and analysis on migration governance in a number of countries.

She has a BA in International Relations from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany; an MA in Human Rights and a PhD in Migration Studies from Sussex University in the UK.