Experts Database

Prior to her PhD studies, Fanny Christou graduated in Political Science, specialised in European Studies, with a 5-year diploma from Sciences Po, France. During the last year of her Political Science degree at Sciences Po, she also got a Master degree in Political Science with a major in Geopolitics and International Relations, from the University of Toulouse and Sciences Po Toulouse, in partnership with the Staffordshire British University, UK. After this, she obtained an additional Master degree in European and International Studies with a specialisation on International Cultural Strategies, (University of Albi, 2013-2014).

She got her doctoral degree (PhD in Geography), with a thesis entitled “The political mobilisation’s territorialisation of Palestinian diaspora in Sweden”, in December 2017 in France (co-supervision between the University of Poitiers, Migrinter, the American University of Beirut and Sciences Po Paris) financially supported by different prestigious institutions (Foundation Poitiers University, Foundation of France, the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence and CMES).

She has been awarded a one-year post-doctoral fellowship funded by the French Red Cross Foundation in October 2018 with a research project entitled: “Socio-cultural practices of the Palestinians in Germany in the field of social and solidarity economy: towards a new model of integration?”.

Fanny Christou is currently based at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), as a post-doctoral researcher for the “Resilience in Urban Sudan” project granted by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and co-funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS).

Anastasia Christou is Associate Professor of Sociology, member of the Social Policy Research Centre and founding member of the FemGenSex research network at Middlesex University. Anastasia has engaged in multi-sited, multi-method and comparative ethnographic research in the United States, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, France, Iceland and Switzerland.

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Sciences and International Relations at Istanbul University. I am currently a guest researcher in the Centre for Global Migration Studies at Göttingen University. My Ph.D. research based on "return migration, collective memory, and transnational social spaces". I have studied return migration, collective memory, and translocality. Previously, I graduated from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Istanbul University. At the same time, I graduated Department of International Relations at Anadolu University. After undergraduate study, I got a Master’s degree from the Department of International Relations in the Institute of Social Science of the Eskisehir Osmangazi University. I completed my Master’s degree with the thesis entitled “Political Discourse on Syrian Refugees: Case of Turkey”.

Oana Ciobanu is Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Switzerland. Her research interests are in the area of older migrants, transnationalism and social networks.

Mălina Ciocea is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), Bucharest (Romania). She is the coordinator of the CoDiPo (Communication, Discourse, Public Problems) Laboratory, Center for Research in Communication at SNSPA. She has been involved in research grants covering the topics of the Romanian diaspora in media and political discourse, public problems and media debates in the Romanian public sphere, identity and memory studies. She has published several chapters and articles on these topics, among which:
Diasporic media and counterpublics. Engaging anti-immigration stances in the UK. Journal of Language and Politics, 2020 (co-authored with I.D. Mădroane and A.I.Cârlan);
Discourse in Transnational Social Fields (special issue in Critical Discourse Studies, 2017, guest co-edited with C. Beciu, I.D. Mădroane and A.I.Cârlan);
Debating Migration as a Public Problem. National Publics and Transnational Social Fields. Peter Lang, 2018 (co-edited with C. Beciu, I.D. Mădroane and A.I.Cârlan).

I am a second-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, UK, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. My PhD research investigates the changing regimes of belonging for Romanian migrants in London after Brexit and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using an ethnographic approach, I analyse Romanians’ transnational practices and trajectories. Starting from migrants’ experiences of work, my PhD aims to document the precarious, yet productive connections weaved by Romanians as they navigate the metropolitan economy.

In turn, I am interested in the manifestations of labour outside the confines of migrants’ workplaces. My research focuses on the intersections between class, gender, and ethnicity which give rise to new patterns of inequality between Romanians in London. By documenting these changes anthropologically, I hope to contribute to the theorisation and analysis of the contested status of Eastern European migrants in present-day Europe.

Prior to starting my PhD, I studied for my BA Anthropology and Sociology and my Masters in Research Methods at Durham University, UK. My Masters thesis entitled 'Hai cu maneaua, hai cu sarmaua’: Competing values of labour migration amongst Romanians in London serves as a pilot study for my ongoing doctoral research.

Silvia Cittadini is a post-doctoral researcher and consultant, specialised in the analysis of inclusion policies, anti-discrimination, minority protection and gender equality. She earned a PhD in Politics and Human Rights at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa in 2019, where she defended a thesis on the Right to Adequate Housing and the EU strategy for the inclusion of Roma in the housing sector. She served as a research fellow at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg and at the Centre for Gender and Politics at the University of Belgrade. She has also been a Post-doctoral research fellow at the Romani Studies Program of the Central European University. Within her work, Silvia gained experience in conducting qualitative fieldwork research both in the Italian context and in the Western Balkans.