Experts Database

Ellen Desmet is associate professor of migration law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. She founded and heads the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Ellen does research on asylum and migration law, paying particular attention to human and children's rights implications as well as socio-legal perspectives.

My research interests focus on migration, identity and diasporas: the way communities perform, produce and reproduce belonging, and the spaces they create and recreate. My main areas of study cover Latin America and the Middle East, and the links between the two regions. I have done research in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. I am currently researching the Venezuelan migrations in the Americas. I am also one of the Leads for the Migration and Refugees Research Network at Oxford Brookes University.
https://www.brookes.ac.uk/research/networks/migration-and-refugees-rese…

Labour Migration and Integration Expert.
People first should be the basis for policies and measures.
Giovanni deals with immigration, legal advice, planning, management (operational and financial) and evaluation of programs for the social inclusion of the vulnerable groups. He is interested in migration policies, labour market inclusion policies (labour active policies, traineeships, employment services,) and socio-economic autonomy transition services for unemployed migrant workers, vulnerable families, children with educational and family difficulties, refugees and holders of other forms of protection.
Giovanni works with international organizations, central governments, local authorities (Regions, Municipalities) and other public and private entities. Giovanni has gained experience in the NGO and associations sector.
He gained experience in dealing with EU funded projects and relevant budget procedures.
Giovanni can speak English and Spanish.

Maria Luisa Di Martino is a current EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellow, with the project REWRITE: Rewriting Migrant Identities across Women’s Literature, at Ca´Foscari University of Venice and Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Center for Life-Writing (University of Oxford) - Wolfson College. With ten years of international work experience in vulnerable social contexts, working with marginalised groups, in the management of social intervention projects and social inclusion programmes, at local and European level, her research and publications focus on migration and mobility, identity transformation processes, and self-reflexivity in migration literary works, explored from an intersectional perspective and systemic/relational approach. Her research activity is related to the analysis of systemic structures of power and oppression in migrant women, approached from a feminist criticism, in order to foster the social change.

Currently, I am a Ph.D. researcher at Lund University (2020 - ongoing).
My research interests cover topics such as Migration, Gender-Based Violence, and EU/National Welfare Systems.
Before earning a Ph.D. position, I was working as a researcher at the Centre for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing, INRCA - Italian National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing.
In my past academic and professional careers, I focused my research interests on the field of Social Policy, Public Policy & Welfare Services.

Cristiana Di Pietro is a postdoctoral researcher at LUMSA University (Rome, Italy). Her main research interests concern the inter-relation between migration dynamics and welfare sustainability by capability approach and relational sociology perspectives. PhD in Civil Economy, graduated in International Relations, her current projects deal with the impact of the governance of local networks on the labour market integration of third-country nationals.