Experts Database

I am an Assistant Professor in cultural anthropology and development sociology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. I am also affiliated with Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), as a visiting Scholar in Residence at the School of Foreign Service (SFS). My work focuses on migration and citizenship regimes, the anthropology of development, and the political economy of race and class in the Gulf Arab states, with a particular focus on Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) & Saudi Arabia.

I hold a joint PhD degree from the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and KU Leuven (Belgium).

My work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies; Mobilities; Middle East Critique; Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration; and the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

Contact: Jaafar.alloul@ntu.edu.sg

Dr Sajida Zareen Ally is Lecturer in Anthropology and Global Health at the University of Bristol and a Research Associate in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research and teaching lie at the intersection of social, medical and political anthropology with a focus on South Asian migration to the Arab Gulf, and global public health. Sajida is interested in the phenomenological and socio-cultural dimensions of migrant illness/wellness experience, migrants’ health-related entitlements, and the transnational governance of labour migration and healthcare, particularly in Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Her current research is supported by REALM (Research & Empirical Analysis of Labour Migration) – a project led by INCITE, Columbia University and funded by New York Univeristy-Abu Dhabi.

Shaddin Almasri is a Jordanian-American PhD candidate based in Krems, Austria. Her research interests are in aid policy, development, and refugee labor integration with a regional focus on the Middle East. Previously, she held research and advocacy roles at Oxfam in Jordan and at the WANA Institute, a local Jordanian thinktank. She holds an MSc Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London and a BA Economics from the American University of Sharjah. She has held a variety of roles in short term research projects spanning topics such as climate migration, refugee discrimination, stratification in labor migration policy and refugee access to self-reliance mechanisms. .She is currently a PhD Migration Studies candidate at Danube University Krems, where she is conducting research on nationality-based discrimination in refugee aid and inclusion policies across Jordan, Turkey and Ethiopia.

Silvia Almenara Niebla works as postdoctoral researcher at Communication Studies Department (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). She works on the ERC project Reel Borders lead by prof. Kevin Smets. She obtained her PhD in gender and migration studies (Universidad de La Laguna, 2020, extraordinary doctoral prize) with a study on transnational belonging and media practices among Sahrawi refugees from a gender perspective. She is vice-chair of the Diaspora, Migration and the Media section of ECREA.

Faime Alpagu studied Sociology in Istanbul and Vienna. Her dissertation project was funded by a doctoral scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and she received the 2016 Dissertation Award for Research on Migration from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research has been further supported by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften and City of Vienna.

Jill Alpes is a legal anthropologist working on migration from the perspectives of aspiring and deported migrants in the Global South. Based at the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University, her current project looks at the work of lawyers and activists in producing and submitting evidence on pushbacks to the European Court of Human Rights. Jill is the author of "Abroad at any cost: Brokering High-Risk Migration and Illegality in West Africa" and has published widely in the Journal of Refugee Studies, JEMS, REMI, PoLAR, Africa, Social and Legal Studies and Autrepart.

PhD candidate in Law and Pluralism in the School of Law in the University of Milano – Bicocca. Her current research project is about Muslim family Law in Europe. She got her first PhD in Islamic Jurisprudence and Its Foundations from The University of Jordan, where she published two monographic books; “The Legal Ruling, Which Concerns Muslim Minorities’ Personal Status”, and “Legal & Religious Consequences of Immaterial Harm- a comparative study”, both in Arabic. She is also currently collaborating with the University of Milan, and with SSML Carlo Bo Institute to teach the Arabic language, beside her writings in Aljazeera Media Network blogs

Tunay Altay is a PhD candidate in Humboldt University’s Department of Diversity and Social Conflict. His research and teaching focuses on race critical theories, immigration, gender and sexuality. As part of his cumulative dissertation, Tunay is working on the historical, socio-economic, and institutional factors that affect the lives of marginalized people and how they respond to discrimination, stigmatization in Germany. His previous work involved qualitative studies of the experiences of LGBTQ immigrant groups and Bulgarian sex workers in Berlin. His research has been supported by the DAAD, DeZIM, Heinrich Böll Sitftung, and Humboldt University's Institute for Social Sciences, among others. In addition, Tunay writes cultural commentaries about politics, popular culture, and activism in Germany and Turkey. He is a board member of the European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA).