Experts Database

Expertise in political sociology, socio-legal studies, migration and citizenship with strong skills in qualitative methods and experience in quantitative research. Holds PhD in the Interdisciplinary Near and Middle Eastern Studies Program and Graduate Certificate in Law and Society Studies at the University of Washington. Currently, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Public Administration and Sociology.

Laavanya Kathiravelu is Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Her research is at the intersections of international migration, race and ethnic studies and contemporary urban diversity, particularly in Asia and the Persian Gulf. Her first book was Migrant Dubai (Palgrave, 2016), which explored experiences of low wage migrant workers in the UAE. She has also published widely on issues of race, inequality and migration in Singapore. Prior to joining NTU, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She was also a Fung Fellow at Princeton University between 2015-16. In 2019, she was recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Fellowship (SSHRF) and recognised as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) in the area of academic leadership. Laavanya is board member of migrant welfare organisation, HOME as well as civil society group AWARE, whose aim is to advance gender equality. She comments regularly on public forums and through op-eds on issues of migration, race and diversity in Singapore. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar based at the City University of New York (CUNY)

Caitlin Katsiaficas is a policy analyst in ICMPD’s Policy Unit, where her recent research focuses on international protection, talent attraction, and integration. Prior to joining ICMPD, she held positions at the Migration Policy Institute, World Bank, International Rescue Committee, and George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, in addition to internships with local and national refugee resettlement organisations in the United States. Caitlin holds an MA and BA in international affairs from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where her studies focused on conflict, migration, and development.

Dr. Atinder Pal Kaur is working as Assistant Professor (Sociology) in the Dept. of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. She has completed her Ph.D. (2018) from the Department of Sociology, Panjab University Chandigarh. She has completed her M.A in sociology from the Department of Sociology, Panjab University Chandigarh. She Graduated with Sociology and Political Science Honours from the Department of Social Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. She has already published papers in the field of Migration, Gender, and development. She has presented a paper on Migration and Gender Equality in the International Institute of Social Sciences 2017 in Hague, The Netherlands. She has done Project with UNFPA for six months, designation as Research Officer; she attended two workshops on Research Methodology, one with UN¬FPA. She also attended a Summer Program at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 2013, Mumbai. She published a paper entitled “International migration and Impact of remittances on left behind wives: a study of Doaba region of Punjab” (2019) in SI Rajan and Neetha N (eds) Migration, Gender and Care Economy. 103-122, Routledge London. And also “Migration and Cultural Challenges through a gender lens: Punjabi Transnationalism in Doaba Region (Punjab)” (2019). Research Monograph Series GRFDT. 5(4), 4-13. She is also a member of scientific Societies that include “Global research forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism” and Indian Society for agricultural development and Policy. Recently join IMESOC. Her research interest includes International and Internal Migration studies, Gender and Development, Cul¬tural and Transnational Diaspora studies, Social Change and Rural Society. Email: atinderbains@gmail.com.

Jana Keck is a research fellow and coordinator of the research area Digital History at the German Historical Institute Washington DC (GHI). She studied English and American studies and linguistics at the University of Stuttgart. Before joining the GHI, she was working in the research project “Oceanic Exchanges: Tracing Global Information Networks in Historical Newspaper Repositories, 1840-1914” which boasted a team of scholars in computational periodical studies from seven countries in Europe and the Americas to examine transcontinental news circulation in C19 newspapers. In her PhD-project “Text Mining America’s German-Language Newspapers, 1830-1914: Processing Germanness,” she investigates viral texts and genres in America’s C19 German-language press to study how sexist, racist, and nationalistic ideas spread across states and decades.

Rahime Özgün Kehya (PhD) is an academic at Kafkas University in the Department of Cinema and Television. Her research focuses on migration, gender, integration, cultural diversity and otherness in film and media studies. She conducted a research project at the Institute of Media Studies at the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany. She has worked for multinational companies and directed and co-produced several short films. She has received research and merit scholarships from DAAD in Germany and TUBITAK in Turkey.