Experts Database

I am Senior Research Fellow in Asylum and Migration at the University of Huddersfield. With extensive experience in the field of forced migration, my expertise has developed through long-term research and direct professional practice, service delivery and management with migrant and refugee organisations. My research focuses broadly on migration, asylum and refugee studies, with a particular focus on feminist narrative research and ethical dilemmas in feminist research. Often using creative, visual and participatory methodologies, I am particularly interested in how migration is understood and experienced by women. I have published and presented widely on these topics, including co-editing “Feminist Narrative Research: Opportunities and Challenges” (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Contributing to many invited presentations at national and international workshops and conferences, my more recent work includes critical engagement with narratives of vulnerability and resistance.

I am one of the Research Leads, shared and alongside Dr. Anna Davidson and Dr. Grainne McMahon, on Feminist Spaces. This project brings together feminist, anti-racist, embodied practices of creating safe(r) spaces and arts activism to resignify space and to perform everyday acts of resistance with voice and action. This research has built a collaborative, capacity-releasing network by pairing up UK and European-based projects of resistance with a range of allied projects in less economically developed countries. Please see our website. We are currently working on Making Spaces which explores feminist responses and survival strategies in the Covid-19 pandemic. Our projects partners include the Racial Justice Network (West Yorkshire) and RAPAR (Manchester).

I am scholar of migration, transnational and translocal processes as linked to livelihoods, aspirations and identities. This research extends to climate change, rural-urban connectivities, societal engagement with new technologies, the role of diasporas and reconsiderations of the contested notion of development.

Dr Kelly Soderstrom is an academic staff member in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD thesis in Politics and International Relations (Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne) examines the role of state responsibilities in shaping the German government's response to the 2015 refugee crisis. Her current research investigates the drivers of interventions by sports-based NGOs in asylum governance.

She holds a Bachelors degree (cum laude) in Political Science / International Relations from Carleton College (USA) and a Masters degree (distinction) in International and European Politics from the University of Edinburgh (UK). Her research interests include asylum governance, European integration and EU politics, NGOs, and sustainability/CSR. Between 2017-2022, she was a Research Partner with the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ network Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies (CONREP). In 2018, she was awarded a graduate fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Ravenna Sohst's research focuses on immigrant integration, social mobility and income dynamics. She is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg/LISER and has previously worked with the OECD's International Migration Division and the IOM's Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC).

I have completed my PhD in Human Rights: Ethical, Social and Political Challenges at the University of Deusto, Bilbao. I also hold a Master's Degree in Intervention in Cases of Violence against Women by the same univeristy. As a pre-doctoral fellow I have done research affiliation at TATA Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India and at the University Complutense of Madrid in Madrid, Spain. I was member of "Deusto Social Values Research Group" and of the Gender Interdisciplinary Research Platform (University of Deusto). My main areas of interest are migration, migration from Global South to Global North, women's studies and gender. I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona and I am member of the Local Studies Research Group.

I am Head of Research at the Migration Policy Group, Brussels, Belgium. Previously, I worked as policy officer/consultant for the European Commission (DG Employment) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and as researcher for the Eindhoven University of Technology. I hold a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and University of Milan-Bicocca (joint degree). My research interests include comparative integration policies (in particular, in the EU), labour market integration of migrants (e.g. migrant entrepreneurship), and social network analysis.