Experts Database

Thusinta Somalingam received her PhD in Pedagogy and Education from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany in 2015. Her doctoral research explored the construction of diaspora and the creation of ethno-national belongings through education organisations of the Sri Lankan Tamils abroad. She has previously worked as a research assistant at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Currently, she is working as a lecturer and coach in a private education company and is engaged at the Research Center for Transnational Social Work in Mainz. Her primary academic interests include transnational migration, ethnic and migrant communities, Tamil Diaspora, qualitative social research and education.

I am broadly interested in the interplay of knowledge, space, memory and mediated digital and post-digital communication. In different perspectives and different research contexts, I examine these areas with a variety of questions and foci.In essence, I am interested in processes of transformation at the micro, meso and macro level.

An important part of my work is the development and adaptation of qualitative approaches. My focus is on theory generating methodologies, discourse analysis, visual and multimodal methods as well as mapping methods.

I have developed and taught courses on bachelor-, master- and PhD-level in qualitative methods, sociology, media and cultural theory and digital communication.

I am a political scientist, working on the field of migration during the last 16 years. I currently work at the Greek Ombudsman, at the Department of Human rights as a Senior Investigator, investigating cases and complaints concerning the protection of asylum seekers', refugees' and migrants' rights. I hold two degrees and one master and I speak Greek, English, French and Spanish. I have worked voluntarily as the coordinator of the research team of the Jean Monnet, European Centre of Excellence Program "The European Migration Management in the Eastern Mediterranean: The EU, Turkey and Greece" and as a core user/instructor of the SONETOR project, «Training of Cultural Mediators utilising new Social Networking Software».

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).