Experts Database

Matthias Otten is a professor for political science and intercultural development at TH Koeln - Technology Arts Sciences in Germany (Faculty of Social Sciences). His teaching and research interests include intercultural communication, disability studies and inclusion, internationalisation of higher education, and migration research. A second focus of his work is international and comparative social work research. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Karlsruhe and a Master in Social Sciences from the University of Göttingen. Since 2012 he is vice-dean for internationalisation at the faculty level.

Jonas Otterbeck, professor of Islamic studies, has written extensively on Islam and Muslims in Europe, Islamophobia and Islam and music. He is educated at Lund University, Sweden.

Ismail Oubad is a Doctoral Researcher within the ERC AdG SOLROUTES Project (Solidarities and Migrants' Routes Across Europe at Large), hosted by the University of Genoa. He is also a Visiting Researcher at the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies of the University of Liège. Currently his research interest and PhD thesis focus on the solidarity actions and support networks to dwelling and migrants’ border transgression within and across the Belgian borders, adopting ethnographic methods. Previously, Ismail has conducted research on, inter alia, the quest for legalization of Sub-Saharan protection seekers within the asylum determination procedures in Italy.

Mohammed Ouhemmou, an assistant professor Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. My
fields of interest include public policy analysis, migration and internationalization policies. My
research investigates the link between foreign policy and the politics of mobility. In my Ph.D. thesis I examined the nexus between scholarships granted to sub- Saharan students in Morocco and the country’s desire to expand its influence, soft power, and build friendly links with African states. I am currently researching operations of migrant displacement and dispersal in Northern Morocco.

I hold a PhD degree at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). My dissertation contributed to theoretical and empirical discussions regarding the governance of irregular migration and the experiences of irregular migrants at the city level. Currently, I work at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona(UAB) for an ERC project "Migration and Democratic Diffusion (MIGRADEMO)". Furthermore, I serve as an elected co-chair of the Immigration Research Network of the Council for European Studies (CES) at Colombia University. I am also an affiliated researcher to Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity, and Hospitality in Global Perspective Project based at Toronto Metropolitan University and Local Responses to Precarious Migrants in Spanish Cities(MUNMIGRA) at the UPF.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gökay Özerim is a member of the International Relations Department and the Director of the European Union Research Center at Yaşar University, Izmir. Currently, he has been holding the Jean Monnet Chair on migration in EU-Turkey relations. His main study fields are international migration, security and European integration process. He was awarded Chevening Scholarship of UK Government in 2010 and carried out a part of his researches in the Centre of Migration, Politics and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford as part of his PhD studies. In 2014, he has been at the Institute of European Studies in University of California, Berkeley as a visiting scholar. He has been also working in several European Union funded projects and delivering trainings on intercultural learning, youth participation, social responsibility and project management since 2005. He was awarded a Jean Monnet Module in 2016 and Jean Monnet Chair in 2019 by the European Commission.