Experts Database

I hold a PhD in Urban Sociology from the University of Milan-Bicocca where I completed a thesis on a comparative analysis of urban conflicts, the normativity of policy instruments and immigrants’ political engagement. I was a Postdoc Fellow at the same university and at the university of Bologna where I worked on national research projects on social housing, immigrant inclusion, immigrant inclusion in small municipalities and intergenerational obligations. Since 2017 I have been working at the SSIIM Unesco Chair of the University Iuav of Venice where I have been researching on migrant inclusion and urban policies and on human trafficking and social protection, as well as on unaccompanied minors – as a legal guardian. My main research interests include: asylum and migration policy, multi-level governance, agency and institutional cultures, human trafficking and sexual and labour exploitation, begging, Nigerian mafia, the rights and guardianship of unaccompanied minors. I am currently involved in two EU projects: INSigHT (Building Capacity to deal with human trafficking and transit routes in Nigeria, Italy, Sweden) and Push (Precarious Housing in Europe).

I am a social anthropologist interested in the political economy of migration. Between 2000-2010, I worked in the development sector in South Asia, doing research, knowledge management and programme management focusing on gender equality and women's human rights.​ I was awarded the PhD in 2019 in Anthropology and Sociology of Development from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.My current work focusses on the political economy of migration in the Bengal Borderlands in South Asia.

I currently work at Centre Maurice Halbwachs (École Normale Supérieure) as a 'Chercheuse Contractuelle'. I am also one of the Editorial Managers at 'Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism'. I graduated with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh in 2016. My PhD thesis explored the different forms of Kurdishness in Turkey with regards to place, the language use, and state rhetoric. My book based on this thesis (Customized Forms of Kurdishness in Turkey: State Rhetoric, Locality, and Language Use) was published in 2018 by Lexington Books. My postdoctoral research aims to unpack how whiteness is (re-)constructed intersectionally within the second-generation immigrants from Turkey. My research interests are belonging, intersectionality, transnationalism, and Turkey. I was also a Young Visiting Researcher funded by the Campus France Fellowship at Centre Nantais de Sociologie and a Fellow at Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen in Germany. To date, I have taught various courses in Sociology at all levels at Istanbul Okan University and the University of Edinburgh.

I'm a PhD student at Trent University, Canada with a research focus on postpartum experiences of Ghanaian immigrant women moms in Ontario. I depart from damage- and deficit-based approaches, conscientizing the new moms to draw on the strength of their diasporic communities and the wisdom of traditional Ghanaian practices to improve their postpartum mental health experiences. My research interest areas are migrant women's health, gender and labour migration, and migration policy development. I hold MSc. Global Health from Uppsala University (Sweden), M.A. Social Protection from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and BSc. Physiotherapy from University of Ghana. My past research explored the labour market experiences of Ghanaian family migrant women in Germany.

Tiina Seppälä holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Lapland. Her PhD thesis (2010) dealt with the anti-war movement and theories of global resistance. She is interested in activism, social movements, development, forced migration, displacement, postcolonial and feminist theory, ethnography and engaged scholarship. Recently, she has focused on feminization of resistance, decolonial feminist solidarity, and arts-based research methods.

She has engaged with slum activists and women’s rights movements in Nepal and Bangladesh, anti-eviction movements in India, asylum seekers in Finland, and anti-war activists in the UK. She has been a visiting scholar in India (Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2011–12), Nepal (Nepal Institute of Peace, 2012, 2014, 2020), Bangladesh (Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit based at the University of Dhaka, 2015), and Australia (University of Newcastle, 2019). Her research project Governance, Resistance and Neoliberal Development: Struggles against Development-Induced Displacement and Forced Evictions in South Asia was funded by the Academy of Finland (2013–16).

Currently, she works as a university lecturer in Political Science (temporary position) and a as researcher in Rethinking Nordic Democracy: Civil Disobedience in Exceptional Times research project, funded by the Academy of Finland. She is a member of the Service Design Research Group CO-STARS at the Faculty of Art and Design. She has the title of an adjunct professor (docent) of International Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä.

Is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of the research group PRISMA UKRAÏNA: War, Migration and Memory at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Prior to this, she was a fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg, University of Jena. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since 2020 and a professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University. In 2021 a visiting lecturer at the University of Basel. In 2016–2020 Research Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, where she developed a digital atlas of social changes in Ukraine after Euromaidan.

Ms. Wegahtabrhan Sereke is a PhD assistant candidate at the institute for Public Communication in
Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano. She is working on a research project titled “Migrant belonging: discourse, affect and capital” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jolanta Drzewiecka. Before that she worked as a home-based consultant for the Belgian think-tank Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA), a centre of expertise on EU’s foreign policy towards Africa. Formerly, she was a Staff Attorney at the Legal Advisor’s Office to the Eritrean State President. Prior to this, she served as an elementary school teacher in rural Eritrea. She obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Asmara in 2007, a Master of Laws (LLM) in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in 2013, and another LLM in International Dispute Settlement in 2011 from the University of Geneva (MIDS). After completion of her graduate studies in Geneva, Sereke has interned with three Untied Nations agencies in Geneva.

Senior Lecturer

PhD Candidate and Early Career Researcher