Experts Database

Maurizio Arfaioli has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Medici Archive Project since 2011, and has been a contributor to the content and development of the project's digital platforms and its research programmes since 2005. His interests include military history, Grand Ducal Florence, Spanish Italy and Low Countries, early modern military iconography, digital prosopography and military migration. Arfaioli's current projects focus on Italian military migration to the Habsburg Netherlands (1567-1706).

Dr Nat Arias obtained their PhD in International Development from the School of Global Studies in November 2023. Their thesis explores how race, gender and border regulation contribute to new forms of surveillance and involuntary displacement for refugee and undocumented migrant women and trans people within humanitarian and social welfare systems in Spain. Their research conceptually bridges postcolonial feminism, critical humanitarian, the colonialities of migration, and trans/queer studies with participatory research methods and activist ethnographies.

A former McNair Scholar (Rutgers U. Class of 2015), Nat contributed to the early career research community at Sussex by supporting engagement and outreach for doctoral researchers through their SAGE Research Hive Scholarship (2021 - 2022).
During their previous work as a public health research consultant, they applied various participatory qualitative research methods to support a range of health and social justice interventions in sexual and reproductive health, post-disaster relief, LGBT+ rights, and barriers to care for disabled migrants. Nat developed and refined several qualitative and quantitative program monitoring and evaluation instruments for NGOs, US state and federal health departments, and international aid organisations. They are a contributing author for the 'Programme Evaluation Technical Report WeSpeakNYC' policy report for the NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs in 2018.

Nat is a skilled mixed-methods programme evaluation expert. They have the following technical research skills: Technical Report Writing, Participatory Action Research, Critical Ethnographies, Developing monitoring systems for Public Health and NGO Program Monitoring tools, and creating public health needs assessments.

Dr Arias is highly skilled with the following digital analysis software: NVIVO, MAXQDA, and SPSS for qualitative research.

Complementary to their ongoing doctoral research project, Nat holds the following positions in their research communities:

Leadership Roles:
- Steering committee member, Centre for Advanced International Theory ('CAIT') from 2021-2023
Find out more about CAIT by visiting: www.sussex.ac.uk/cait/

- Sussex Research Hive Scholar 2021-20222
Find out more about Sussex Hive Scholars by visiting: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/research/hive

Undergraduate TEACHING experience
Nat is the Seminar Lead for the following undergraduate modules:
'Gender and Development: Theory, Concepts and Issues' (Spring 2021 - Spring 2024) for the Department of International Development.
'Social Change, Culture and Development' - Seminar Lead Autumn 2023 for the Department of International Development.

I am Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Neuchâtel and Associate Researcher at the nccr – on the move. I hold a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence 2012). My research focuses on the twin challenge of migration and minority nationalism to the theory and practice of citizenship, in a historical and comparative perspective.

Maurizio Artero is a researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan. He holds a PhD in Urban Studies from the Gran Sasso Science Institute and the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa. He works on international migration, especially in urban contexts, and his articles have appeared in journals such as Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Cities, Citizenship Studies and Voluntas.

As a Development Studies scholar, I consider myself as an interdisciplinary researcher, given that the field amalgamates several disciplines. I am particularly keen on searching for worldviews that can change both the development narrative and migration mantra within the framework of the Global South. The general logic is to develop a discourse that departs from the “dogmatic” views that more or less seem rigidly applicable within the Global North. I hold a bachelor degree in Education from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, an MSc degree in Development Studies from London South Bank University, UK. I am currently in the final phase of my PhD in Development Studies at the University of Lisbon, IGOT, Portugal.

A. Aziz is a PhD candidate at School of Communication, Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. His current research examines the social uses and consequences of digital technologies among Rohingya diaspora in a transnational and comparative context. His research focuses on digital and cultures practices of everyday life with particular emphasis on diaspora , religion, gender, ethnic identity and inclusion. Earlier, he studied and researched in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands under the Erasmus Mundus scholarship and Netherlands fellowship program.

Badre is a policy development expert, based in Germany. His research seeks to analyze current norms that hamper the progress and livelihood of migrants, women, and youth as social groups; and aims at generating evidence-based recommendations that could inform national and regional policies, providing comparable data across borders on key countries in the Southern Mediterranean Neighborhood. He worked for a number of international organizations (Fulbright, EU-JRC, ERASMUS+, InterAcademy Partnership, Konrad-Adenaeur Foundation, Global Young Academy, Next Einstein Forum, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, ECSA Global, and Arab Council for Social Sciences, American Political Sciences Association, MAJALAT Consortium; Réseau Euromed France REF; and EDU4U. He has also served as visiting professor & research fellow at Alfred University in New York, Monterey Institute for International Studies in California, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; Aalborg University in Denmark, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, and Babes Bolyai University in Romania. He is the editor of Social Science Section for ELSAVIER & Scientific African Journal. His recent publications include: North-South Economic Diplomacy: EU-Morocco Free Trade Negotiation (Germany, November 2020); & Voices of Early Career Researchers in and out of the Academy: A Pan- African Perspective (Germany May 2020). Currently, he is a coordinator and author the EuroMeSCo Joint Study Group 2021: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia: A Comparative Perspective on Maghreb Countries Migration Cooperation with their West African Neighbours.

Osman Balkan is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and Senior Fellow at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the politics of migration, race/ethnicity, and citizenship in Western Europe and the Middle East. His first book project, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe explores how minority communities manage and make sense of death and dying in countries where they face structural barriers to full citizenship.