Experts Database

Assistant Professor in European and International Law at Utrecht University Law School, where I am also a Researcher within the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE).
My research combines expertise in the domains of European law, international human rights law and international refugee law, with particular attention to the development of the Common European Asylum System. I examine the EU institutional, law-making and enforcement dynamics in the context of asylum and migration and the relationship between the EU asylum legislation and the main international human rights legal instruments, including the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

Sara Niedzwiecki is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research is on the process through which social policies are formed and implemented as well as on the territorial structure of government in Latin America. Niedzwiecki’s book, Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America (2018, Cambridge University Press) explores the political factors that shape the implementation of social policies in decentralized countries. A second, co-authored book, Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance (Oxford University Press, 2016), presents the Regional Authority Index for 80 OECD+, Asian, and Latin American countries from 1950 to 2010. During 2020-2021 academic year, Professor Niedzwiecki was a fellow at University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies where she worked on a new project on social policy and immigration in Latin America. This book project studies unequal access to social services and income between immigrants and nationals in Latin America. It describes how legal status and incorporation to the labor market affect immigrants’ access to social policies through an analysis of the main transfers and services in four Latin American countries—Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. It combines original qualitative coding of legislation and policy documents and fieldwork. Niedzwiecki’s work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Politics in Latin America, Regional and Federal Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, International Political Science Review, Saúde Coletiva (Brazil), and Revista de Ciencia Política (Chile).

Academic career

University of Luxembourg, Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, Luxembourg

Since 09/2013: Associate Professor of Political Geography

Saarland University, Department of Geography, Germany

06/2007-08/2013: Assistant professor for European Regional Studies (positively evaluated on 1st February, 2010)

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

10/2010: Guest lecturer

Petro Mohyla Black Sea University, Mykolajiv, Ukraine

09/2009: Guest lecturer

Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde e.V. (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography), Leipzig, Germany

04/2006 -05/2007: Postdoctorial research fellow
01/2006-03/2006: Research scholar

Institut für Ländliche Strukturforschung (Institute for Rural Development Research), J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany

06/2003 -09/2005: Research freelancer

Universität Helsinki in cooperation with Renvall Institute of German Studies in Helsinki, Finland

09/2003-10/2003: Guest lecturer

Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster, Department of Geography, Germany

10/2002-09/2007: adjunct teaching staff member
04-05/2003: Research assistant DFG collaborative research center 493 „Funktionen von Religion in antiken Gesellschaften des Vorderen Orients“ (“Functions of religion in antique societies in the Middle East”)
04/2000-12/2002: Student and research assistant at Prof. Dr. Cay Lienau, working group on Geography of settlements and rural development

University education

05/2012: Habilitation thesis (Venia Legendi) in Geography on „Raumwirksame Aspekte der Nachhaltigkeit – Regionale Resilienz durch Sozialkapital im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Regionalisierung in Europa“ (“Aspects of spatial impact of sustainability – Regional resilience by social capital in the era of globalisation and regionalisation”) and a habilitation presentation on „Massentourismus an der bulgarischen Schwarzmeerküste“ (“Mass tourism at the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast”), Saarland University
2008-2010: „Rheinland-Pfalz-Zertifikat für Hochschuldidaktik“ (Rhineland-Palatinate certificate on university education) 08/2005: Dr. phil. (first supervisor: Prof. Dr. Cay Lienau; second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Grabski-Kieron), Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster
01/2004- 07/2005: Scholar of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation)
2002 - 2005: Dissertation on „Die Rolle der Landwirtschaft im Konzept der Eigenständigen Regionalentwicklung - geographisch untersucht am Beispiel der Region „West“ Irlands “ („The role of agriculture in the concept of endogenous regional development – the example of the region „West“ in Ireland“)
08/2002: University degree (higher diploma, “Diplom”); Higher diploma thesis on „Landwirtschaft in der Region „West“ Irlands. Diversifizierung als Entwicklungsprozess und –strategie im ländlichen Raum“ („Agriculture in the region „West“ of Ireland. Diversification as a development process and strategy in a rural area”)
1997 - 2002: Study of Geography at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster and the Université de Rouen, France with the minor subjects of ethnology and political science

Maayan's socio-legal research focuses on trafficking for labour exploitation, the regulation of labour migration, and the rights of non-citizens. Her current project 'Work as a Site of Agency and a Site of Exploitation' compares the understanding of labour exploitation across policymakers, law enforcement agents and people with lived experience of exploitation, and was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant.

Panagiotis Nikas holds a Bachelor's degree in Theology and in Law. He also holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Public Administration.
In 2012 he served as Director of the First Reception Service in the Greek Ministry for Asylum and Migration for five years. During his term, he acted as ccordinator of the National Action Plan for Asylum and Migration and led the transformation of the Greek Reception and Identification system for mixed migration flows.
After leaving the Service, he worked as an expert in asylum in Europe mainly as member of think-tanks and independent researcher, promoting policy changes in National Reception and Asylum systems.
Since 2018 he is the founder and director of ZEUXIS, a Greek NGO operating nationally implementing projects aiming at providing support and protection to vulnerable groups (i.e. refugees and migrants, unaccompanied children, single parent families etc).

I am sociologist with an expertise in ethnic and migration studies and a co-editor of a forthcoming volume "Visual Methods in Migrations Studies" (2021, Springer, with A.Desille). I research immigrant communities in Europe (Turkey included) with use of ethnography and visual and sensory methods. In 2015-2016 I was a Marie Curie Early Stage researcher and INTEGRIM fellow hosted by Migration Research Center, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey.

MA, Applied Linguistics, Identity(ies) in Narrative

Social scientist with the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland in the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences group. I work across a number of research projects both national and international in scope, investigating rural issues. These include: demographic change and migration into and out of rural remote areas of Scotland; rural and island responses to Covid-19 in Scotland, exploring the effectiveness of digitalisation and digital tools in crofting communities in Scotland and issues of belonging and home for return migrants in southern and western counties of Ireland.