Experts Database

Lotte Pelckmans is an anthropologist who has been working on social mobility, displacement, social media, nomadism and rights at the crossroads of (post-)slavery and migration studies, with a focus on francophone West Africa. Currently I am employed as associate professor at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, Copenhagen University.

I studied and worked at Leiden University (Anthropology, African Studies Centre, Institute for History) and was associate professor at Nijmegen University (Anthropology and Development Studies). I obtained an EU co-fund scholarship for a year in French academia (CEAF, EHESS) and worked as a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (2015-2016), Copenhagen, Denmark.

In 2016 I co-edited the documentary movie ‘River Nomads’, which is about the transnational mobility of nomadic fishermen in West Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Mali). From 2017 I work at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (https://amis.ku.dk) part of the SAXO institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2018 I combined my lecturer position there with a postdoc in the project readingslavery.au.dk at Comparative Literature, Aarhus University. From 2018, I started working as an editorial board member of the recently established journal ‘Slaveries and Post-Slaveries’, based at CIRESC in France. In 2019 I was a senior Heinz Heinen fellow at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), Germany. The fellowship was about testimonies for legal court cases, in contemporary ‘post-slavery’ societies of French West Africa. From early 2020, I started working as a Co-I on a collaborative GCRF/UKRI UK funded research project, about Protracted Displacements of People with slave status in Mali, West Africa, while based at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, Copenhagen University.

Michaela Pelican is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. She is also the Speaker of the international research unit 'The production and reproduction of social inequalities‘ and the Director of the international research cluster ‘Conflict-Induced Displacement and Socio-Economic Resilience: Learning From Neglected Conflicts in Cameroon and Myanmar’.
Michaela’s thematic foci are South-South mobility, social inequality, ethnicity, conflict, and research methodology. Her regional focus is on Sub-Saharan Africa (in particular Cameroon), the United Arab Emirates and Southern China.

Saara Pellander is the Director of the Migration Institute of Finland. She is a Doctor of Social Sciences and holds the title of Associate Professor in Political History at the University of Helsinki. She is the PI for the Academy of Finland funded INDEFI project on deportability and family ties. She has worked and published on issues related to the regulation of cross-border intimacies and family reunification especially from the perspectives of policies and their implementation, as well as media representations of (forced) migration and related activism.

PhD in Law and Political Science (University of Barcelona). Her research focuses on the UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees and its impact on the international refugee protection regime. She holds a master’s degree in Public Administration and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations, both from Tecnológico de Monterrey (México).
She works as an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science & International Relations at Tecnológico de Monterrey’s School of Social Sciences and Government.
Former visiting research fellow at Arizona State University’s College of Law in Washington DC (U.S.), as well as at Sapienza Università di Roma, in Rome (Italy). Member of the American Political Science Association, the Mexican International Studies Association, the Network of Researchers on North America (REDAN) and the Permanent Seminar on Canadian Studies (CISAN-UNAM).

Professor Simon Pemberton is a Professor of Human Geography at Keele University.

During his career, Simon worked on several post-doctoral research projects before becoming Head of Regeneration for a local authority in North Wales, UK. After four years in practice, Simon moved to become Director of the Merseyside Social Inclusion Observatory at the University of Liverpool between 2004 and 2010. Subsequently, Simon moved to the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) at the University of Birmingham and was Interim Director between 2012 and 2013.

In 2013 he moved to take up a position as Reader in Human Geography at Keele University, UK and was promoted to a Chair in Human Geography in December 2016. His academic work has a strong policy application and bridges the geography-migration-public policy interface. He has research interests in superdiversity and the politics and policies of migration. He has published widely in this area.

I am currently pursuing my PhD in Population Studies at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique. My research interests are centered around the themes of international migration, wealth inequality, transnationalism, finance, and intersectionality. My research project focused on wealth accumulation processes and financial integration among Colombian immigrants residing in Montreal, with a specific focus on gender.

International Relations and Law graduate at the University of Deusto and holds a Master of Laws in Spanish Legal Practice at the Bar Association of Bizkaia and the same university. She has developed her professional activity in the field of Migration Law and has worked as legal advisor of asylum seekers in Spain. Currently is a PhD researcher in Human Rights, focusing her research on international protection and membership of a particular social group.

Rinus Penninx
Emeritus Professor of the
Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam,
Private: Voorwillense weg 135, 2806 ZG Gouda, The Netherlands. Mob. **31628920466
E-mail: penninxr@xs4all.nl

Biographical Summary
Rinus Penninx has been Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam from 1993 till 2011. He founded the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) at the University of Amsterdam in March 1993 and served as the Institute’s Director until October 2005. From 1999 to 2009, he has also acted as European Co-Chair of International Metropolis. In April 2004, he became Coordinator of the European Commission-funded Network of Excellence IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe). He retired officially in September 2011 from the University of Amsterdam, but continued some activities at the University. He was the coordinator of the IMISCOE Research Network from 2009 till April 2014.
For many years, Rinus Penninx has written on international migration, the settlement of migrants and related policies. ‘Ethnic Minorities’ (1979), his report for the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), formed the starting point for integration policies in the Netherlands. From 1978 to 1988, he worked as a senior staff member in the Research and Development Department of the Dutch Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture, with an emphasis on research relating to the migration and integration of immigrants in the Netherlands.
Major publications in English include: Newcomers: Immigrants and their Descendants in the Netherlands 1550-1995 (Lucassen & Penninx 1997b), Immigrant Integration: The Dutch Case (Vermeulen & Penninx 2000a), Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe 1960-1993 (Penninx & Roosblad 2000b), Western Europe and its Islam (Rath et al. 2001), Citizenship in European Cities (Penninx et al. 2004a), The Dynamics of International Migration and Settlement in Europe: A State of the Art (Penninx et al. 2006a), Migration Policymaking in Europe; The dynamics of Actors and Contexts in Past and Present (Zincone, Borkert & Penninx 2011); Integrating Immigrants in Europe: Research-Policy Dialogues (Scholten, Entzinger, Penninx & Verbeek 2015) and Integration processes and policies in Europe. Contexts, Levels, Actors (Garcés –Mascareñas & Penninx (2016). His most recent book publication is Trade Unions and Migrant Workers (with Stefania Marino and Judith Roosblad), Edward Elgar 2017.

Personal background
Rinus, who is officially known as Marinus Johannes Antonius Penninx, was born on 11 January 1948 in Erp, the Netherlands. Since 1976, he has been happily married to Margriet Carlier. They have two sons.

Education
June 1998: PhD cum laude in Geography, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
1973: Masters in Cultural Anthropology, State University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
1969: Bachelors in Cultural Anthropology, Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
1960-1966: Classical Gymnasium Alpha, Weert, the Netherlands.

Work and research

2009-2014: Coordinator, IMISCOE Research Network (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe).

2004-2009: Coordinator, Network of Excellence IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe).

1999-2009: European Co-Chair, International Metropolis project.

1993-2011: Professor of Ethnic Studies, Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

1993-2006: Director, Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
As director of IMES, Rinus Penninx has initiated numerous interdisciplinary and cross-national comparative research projects. Examples include the interdisciplinary research project on the rise and decline of the Turkish garment industry in Amsterdam, the demographic reconstruction of the Netherlands’ population of Jewish descent and the cross-national comparative research on The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) project. Rinus also played a significant role in the implementation of the UNESCO-funded Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in Europe project (MPMC) (Penninx et al. 2004a) and the Cities for Local Integration Policies project. Rinus has served as a consultant and a contributing researcher for various international organisations such as the Council of Europe (Penninx 1984b and 2005a), the European Commission (2005c), the OECD (Rindoks et al 2006a), the UNECE (2005b) and UNESCO (2005d)

1990-1993: Professor of Ethnic Studies and Minority Questions, Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This position involved initiation of a number of large-scale interdisciplinary projects including: a study on the impact of immigration on Dutch society, which was carried out in cooperation with demographers and economists (Penninx et al. 1993); and a cross-national, comparative study on the institutionalisation of Islam, which was conducted by a team of lawyers and social scientists (see Rath et al. 2001 for the English version).

1988-1993: Assistant Professor, Department of Social Research Methodology, Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

1978-1988: Senior staff member, Research and Development Department, Dutch Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture in Rijswijk/The Hague. With an emphasis on research relating to migration and ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, this position allowed Rinus to co-write the Dutch version of a monograph on four centuries of immigration and integration in the Netherlands; the work was subsequently revised and also published in English (Lucassen & Penninx 1997b). Rinus also authored a number of commissioned reports for the Council of Europe (1984b) and the OECD (Penninx 1981-1984), inter alia. He published his PhD dissertation on the state of the art of minority formation in the Netherlands (Penninx 1988b).

1978: Researcher on the position of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the Netherlands and related policies, commissioned by the Scientific Council for Government Policy in The Hague (Penninx 1979).

1974-1977: Research fellow, Netherlands University Foundation for International Cooperation (NUFFIC), The Hague. Interdisciplinary research on the demographic, social and economic consequences of emigration for the regions of origin, particularly in Turkey (Penninx et al.1976, 1978, 1982).

1971: University of Amsterdam doctoral candidate conducting research in Ben Arous on the economic and social effects of emigration for this suburb of Tunis, commissioned by the Bureau de l’Aménagement du Territoire de Grand Tunis (see: Penninx 1973a).

Bernhard Perchinig is a political scientist with more than 30 years of research and consultancy experience in the field of migration, integration and citizenship studies. He is Senior Researcher at ICMPD and a Faculty Member of the Department of Law and International Relations of the Danube University Krems, where he teaches Migration and Minority Studies in the M.A. Programme in International Relations and the M.A. Programme in Human Rights, and in the MSc Programme in Social Work. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Sciences from the University Vienna.

Prior to joining the ICMPD, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights and the University of Vienna and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a Programme Director at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna, and Head of Research at the Funds for Integration of the City of Vienna.
Further to his research and teaching activities, Bernhard Perchinig has consulted several international organizations, national and state governments and has published widely on migration and integration issues. In 2008, he has been awarded the Austrian Federal Medal (“Bundesehrenzeichen”) for Merits in the Intercultural Dialogue.

Research interests: migration-, minority- and integration policies, antidiscrimination, European migration policies, and urban policies for social inclusion.