Experts Database

Dr. Raquel Sáenz Ortiz's research examines how educators shape the ethnic identities of immigrant-origin youth, both positively and negatively. She has also researched culturally sustaining pedagogies for immigrant youth. She began her teaching career as a 6th grade Social Studies teacher in South Texas, across the border from Reynosa, México, where her father was raised. Over the past decade, she taught in a dual language elementary school in Nicaragua and an alternative high school in Boston. Her previous K-12 teaching experience, primarily in immigrant and low-income communities, has guided her research agenda in considering how to effectively support immigrant-origin youth in schools.

Negin is a Sociology instructor at the department of Sociology and Anthropology of Langara College in Vancouver, BC. She has a MA in Sociology from the University of Calgary where she worked on a qualitative research project on the resettlement of Yazidi refugees in Calgary, AB. Her MA thesis explored the agency and resilience of Yazidi women as well as the role of women as service provider staff in the resettlement of the Yazidi community. She is passionate about gender equality and is interested in the experiences of displacement, family conflict, and domestic violence in refugee and immigrant families. As an immigrant herself, Negin is invested in exploring identity crises and the meaning of “home” through the immigration/settlement journey. Negin also works as the Donations Coordinator at AMSSA, Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC.

Zeynep Sahin Mencutek’s research examines the governance of migration, migration narratives, foreign policy-migration nexus, comparative policies and politics in the Global South, and diaspora politics. Her work is mainly based on long-term, qualitative and comparative analysis. Her book, Refugee Governance, State and Politics in the Middle East (Routledge, 2018) explores how refugee governance differs across countries and why they diverge, looking in particular at Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, three of the world's top refugee hosting countries. She published several articles in internationally refereed journals, chapters in international collected volumes, encyclopaedia entries, book reviews and policy reports.

Zeynep received her PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southern California in 2011. Previously, she served as an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations at Gediz University in Turkey and achieved the rank of Docent in 2018. She held an international fellowship at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg from March 2019 to February 2020 to conduct research on polycentric governance, emerging transnationalism and grassroots community organizations of Syrian refugees.

Since November 2017, she serves as the Senior Research Fellow for the Horizon2020 project titled RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond. She prepares co-authored research reports on the legal and institutional framework of refugee governance, border controls, and international protection in Turkey as well as comparative reports of asylum regimes and integration. She is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Peace and Development, University of Duisburg-Essen and is gained Humboldt Research Fellowship Programme for Experienced Researchers to conduct a comparative research on the governance of refugee returns.

Zakaria Sajir is Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellow at the IEGD-CSIC. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Leicester (June 2018). His main research interests include migration mobilities; management of diversity; discrimination and radicalisation. Dr. Sajir has contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge in these fields through a number of publications in various national and international scientific journals such as RIS, Relaciones Internacionales and the International Journal of Communication. Moreover, Dr Sajir has presented his work at various national conferences like the Spanish Conference of Sociology and international conferences organized by the European Academy of Religion. Sajir’s research and training activities have been funded by renowned national and international entities. Of note are: 1) the Doctoral Scholarship, granted by the University of Leicester (October 2012 - September 2015), worth £ 54,495.00; and 2) Ayudas Juan de la Cierva-Formación from Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation in the amount € 50,000.00 (May 2021 - April 2023). Mixed method research training enabled Dr Sajir to acquire expertise in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, as demonstrated in the doctoral research project and participation in numerous international research projects. For example, for his PhD he mobilised original primary data collection in a comparative study focusing on the political behaviours and attitudes of migrants across five cities in Europe. For this research, Dr Sajir used advanced statistical modelling techniques, such as non-linear multivariate regression analyses. In other research projects he realised qualitative in-depth interviews and focus groups with various migrant-origin groups in different languages (French, English, Italian, Spanish and Arabic) and conducted content and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis. He is currently a member of the GEPS-CSIC Research Group, the Spanish Federation of Sociology and European Academy of Religion, as well as reviewer for the journals Migraciones and 'Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones. Dr Sajir has also developed international collaborations, which resulted in publications with international academics and research stays abroad. Dr Zakaria Sajir signed a contract in February 2023 as editor with the publishing company Springer for the publication of a volume on the management of religious and ethnic diversity: an international collaborative effort comprising 23 chapters by established and early-career researchers based in Europe and the US. As a member of the COST Action ETHMIGSURVEYDATA between 2016 and 2021, Dr Sajir took on a number of roles, among which substitute member of the management committee for the UK and delegate for the same country in Work Group 2. Dr Sajir also engaged in various public dissemination activities during his career: he coordinated intercultural and interreligious dialogue workshops with autochthonous youth and unaccompanied foreign minors, which results were published in popular scientific dissemination journals, such as Hesperia. Culturas del Mediterráneo, established relations and collaborated with various third sector organisations during the paid collaboration with EAPN between October and December 2020. He also shared his data and research results with end-users. For example, during his participation in the 'Voices of African Migrants' project, funded by the Ford Foundation and non-profit organisation International Media Support - IMS, he shared his data from the fieldwork done in Niger and Morocco - with the IMS and subsequently made it publicly available on the University of Leicester's repository. Dr Sajir has also engaged with the training and mentoring of young researchers by giving lectures in academic events (eg.: Jornadas Universitarias organized by the Asociación de Jóvenes Investigadores en Ciencias de las Religiones of the University Complutense of Madrid - UCM) and by imparting more than 200 certified teaching hours in undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree courses as teaching assistant, lecturer and guest lecturer (University of Leicester, American University of Madrid, UNED, Comillas Pontifical University and UCM). Since October 2020, he has undertaken the role of examiner of research projects for the Agencia Nacional de Evaluación y Prospectiva where he evaluated a research project in the field of migration studies in the line of "Knowledge Generation Projects", and since the academic year 22/23 Dr Sajir is also supervisor of the student José María Escapa, in the PhD Program in Religious Sciences at UCM. Finally, Dr Sajir contributed to the open science movement by participating in the creation of the Ethnic and Migrant Minorities Survey Registry, which was awarded the ‘Open Science - Open Data’ prize by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research within the category 'Creating the conditions for data reuse' in July 2022.