Experts Database

M.A. Philology 1988 CAU Kiel, Germany

Certificate of Advanced Studies in Public Governance and Administration, ETH Zurich, 2020

My research interests are mainly within the anthropology of migration, with a special focus on refugees and diasporic practices. I am also interested in social memory, gender and home in relation to violent political conflict and flight. My most recent research focuses on the encounters between newly arrived Palestinian refugees and staff at the Swedish Public Employment Service. I am in particularly interested in how the refugees’ experiences of violence are dealt with in those meetings and in the moral issues and bureaucratic strategies that emerge.

I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Gothenburg. My doctoral thesis from 2009 builds on a one-year ethnographic fieldwork in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. In short, the thesis dealt with the many ways that the camp inhabitants tried to maintain continuity, morality and a normal order despite repeated emergencies during the second intifada. I have also done research about Danes and Swedes with a Palestinian background and their diasporic practices, while being a post doc at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. In addition, I have carried out fieldwork in UN-run schools for Palestinian refugee children, focusing on processes of gendered identity formations. I have also worked as a researcher and teacher at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University.

I am an Associate Professor at the American University of Armenia. I have a PhD in Economics from the University of Turin and Master in Economics from the Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna). My research covers a wide range of development topics, such as migration, poverty, micro-finance, gender and international trade. I have publications in International Migration, Empirical Economics, Eastern European Economics, International Economic Journal, Journal of Income Distribution, among other journals. The nexus of migration and remittances is in my research and consultancy agenda since 2010. As a EERC fellow, I have developed theoretical and empirical models on family reunification with migration decisions and public policies embedded. The interaction between (multidimensional) poverty and out-migration is another major topic of my specialization. My rich consultancy expertise brings several multidisciplinary topics connected to migration, from international trade and conflict studies to micro-finance and poverty / inequality.

Having studied skilled migration, return migration and diaspora repatriation in the context of my home country, Armenia, I have now embarked on an academic boat in Istanbul, Turkey. My doctoral research focuses on the modern labor migration of Armenians to Turkey in the context of the Eurasian migration system and post-Soviet social transformations. Being based in Istanbul, I also take a chance of exploring the indigenous Armenian community and their experiences as a minoritised group in Turkey.

PhD Geography, Clark University

I am Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI, where I am director of the EU BORDER CARE project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant. I am co-leader (with Marc Brightman, UCL, and Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Columbia University) of a small project on unidentified migrant death in the Mediterranean, entitled 'Ecologies of Remembrance: The Moral Aferlives of Unidentified Migrant Death Along the Central Mediterranean Migration Route' funded by the Wenner-Gren. I am also member of the ASIL-EU Research Consortium on Asylum Law and Citizenship in EU Borderlands and of the ZIKA Social Science Network.
I am a social and medical anthropologist interested in the study of health and healthcare systems, migration and borderlands, gender and minority rights, kinship, life and remembrance, especially in contexts of social change and crisis. Over the last 13 years, I have worked in Lowland South America, Southern Europe and West Africa.
I was trained at Oxford and Cambridge University and have held research and teaching positions at the Collège de France, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Oxford University.
My current research projects, funded by the ERC and the Wenner Gren

Marika Gruber is senior researcher & lecturer at the School of Management and teaches Inter- and Transculturalism at the Disability & Diversity Studies programme. She is deputy head of the Dept. “Demographic Change and Regional Development” at the Institute for Applied Research on Ageing and is member of the research group “Transformative Societal Political & Cultural Engagement". Her research focus is on migration & integration politics and governance, social inclusion and participatory research.

Ania is a final-year PhD candidate in cultural geography. and education at Durham University, UK. Her doctoral research focuses on the role of parental cultural heritage in shaping the feelings and understandings of belonging amongst immigrant-background emerging adults. Using collaborative qualitative methods to work with emerging adults from a range of cultural and ethnic background, Ania aims to paint a broader picture of how heritage, identity, and education intersect in the narratives of belonging in the migration context. She hopes to use this knowledge to inform further research on practices and policies that would support immigrant communities, mainstream schools, and individuals in navigating these complex processes of understanding and embracing heritage and identity.