Experts Database

I am a final-year Ph.D. Candidate in International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö University. My research expertise lies in transnational families, temporalities of migration, and health and migration.

Award-winning filmmaker and PhD fellow at VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) & UC3M (University Carlos III of Madrid) researching Migration, Borders and Cinema in the ERC Starting Grant Project REEL BORDERS. More info: https://reelborders.eu/Irene-profile

Alejandro Guzmán Rivera, born in Mexico and currently residing in Warsaw, Poland, is a PhD candidate at Kozminski University, specializing in Circular Economy and Supply Chain efficiency. His research is supported by the prestigious OPENMIN grant, focusing on migration studies. Alejandro holds a Master’s degree in Organizations Management from Universidad Veracruzana.

With a strong foundation in quantitative research, he has developed expertise in statistical analysis of financial data and sentiment analysis. A Python and R enthusiast, Alejandro is adept at leveraging these tools for advanced data analysis. His additional education includes training at prominent institutions such as ESSEC Business School and the University of Trento, alongside certifications in Microsoft Power BI, SQL, and R. He also has specialized knowledge in quantitative and mixed methods research design from the University of Ljubljana.

Dr. Karlijn Haagsman is currently Assistant Professor of Globalisation & Development at Maastricht University with a focus on Transnational Migration.

Karlijn has obtained a Bachelor and Master degree in Cultural Anthropology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and subsequently completed a 2-year Research Master termed ‘Migration, Ethnic Relations and Multiculturalism’ at the University of Utrecht. From 2010-2014 she was a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her PhD research focused on the effects of transnational parent-child separation on the well-being of Angolan and Nigerian migrant parents in the Netherlands and was part of the TCRAf_Eu project. After that she did a post-doc on the effects of mobility on the well-being of youth of migrant background as part of the MO-TRAYL Project.

Her expertise lies in transnationalism, transnational families, migration studies, family studies and migrant youth. Her work is based in migration sociology and cultural anthropology.

My academic interests center on the interplay of migration, entrepreneurship, and social change in Africa. This intersection frames my PhD project, investigating Ghanaian returnees’ entrepreneurial pursuits within Accra's creative industry, contextualized by colonial legacies and decolonial aspirations. Guided by the concept of entrepreneuring, encompassing dimensions of emancipation, world making, and belonging, my research explores how entrepreneuring acts as a driver for liberation, reshaping narratives, and facilitating a sense of home and legitimacy.

Dunya Habash is a PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. Through a Woolf Institute Cambridge Scholarship and under the supervision of Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, her ethnographic research with Syrian musicians in Turkey examines the effects of ‘integration’ on music-making and more generally on Syrian cultural practices and imaginaries post-displacement. Dunya is also a PhD Scholar and Outreach Officer at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge. She holds undergraduate degrees in Music and History from Birmingham-Southern College (USA), where she embarked on her first substantive project with Syrian forced migrants, a documentary film on Jordan’s largest refugee camp for Syrians, Zaatari: Jordan’s Newest City. That work led her to complete an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford Department of International Development in 2017 and a TEDx talk in Birmingham, AL. Dunya is the daughter of Syrian immigrants to the United States. Her dual background fuels her interest in Middle Eastern culture, identity politics and migration. She is also a classically trained pianist. 

Elena has a decade of experience working on urban migration and refugee issues in the SWANA region. She has conducted ethnographic research in Egypt, Jordan, and Uganda with Darfuri and Congolese refugees and has managed long term projects funded by the DAAD, the European Union, the Embassy of the Netherlands and Dining for Women. She has additional work experience in research, project development, writing, and public speaking. Her research interests include how urban refugees contest border regimes, legal entitlements owed to refugees and asylum seekers, and European border externalization to North Africa. She has been employed as a Senior Researcher at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo since 2018.