Experts Database

Karen has been researching migration, mainly using ethnographic methods, since the early 1990s. Starting with British emigration to Spain, she wrote the British on the Costa del Sol in 2000 (Routledge). She then spent several years establishing the field of lifestyle migration, and is especially known for the edited volume Lifestyle Migration: relations experiences and expectations (Ashgate 2009, ed with M. Benson). Later she has focused on employing sociological theory for broader understandings of migration processes. This work has been published in international Migration and Social Theory, (Palgrave 2012), and Lifestyle Migration and Colonial traces in Malaysia and Panama (Palgrave 2018, with M. Benson).

Karen’s main contribution to migration studies has been to advocate the telling of practice stories to elucidate the structural and agentic aspects of migration processes and how these interrelate over time. This has informed much of her work, including the recently published International Labour migration to Europe’s Rural Regions (Routledge 2021, ed with J.F. Rye).

Research Fellow, Northumbria University (UK), University of Gothenburg (Sweden)

I am a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, with a specialisation in Migration Studies. My research interests include return migration, (re)integration, transnationalism and community dynamics. I am an experienced migration researcher with a focus on Afghanistan - including fieldwork with Afghan migrants, refugees and returnees in Afghanistan, India, UK, Norway and the USA.

Pedro J. Oiarzabal was born and raised in Bilbao and has spent much of his life between the Basque Country, Ireland and the United States. He holds a PhD in Basque Studies-Political Science from the University of Nevada, Reno, a MPhil in Economics and Social Sciences from Queen's University of Belfast (N. Ireland), and BA in History from the University of Deusto (Bilbao). He is currently the Director of Social Innovation Research at Arima Social Lab (Bilbao). For nine years he had been a PhD Researcher on Migration Studies at the Human Rights Institute, University of Deusto, and also the Jon Bilbao Research Fellow on the Basque Diaspora, 2014-2016, at the University of Nevada, Reno. His research examines diaspora communities interaction with information and communication technologies, with particular emphasis on the Basque case.

Laila Omar is a Fung Global Fellow (Postdoctoral Research Associate) at Princeton University, with primary research interests in international migration and qualitative methods. More specifically, she is interested in the integration process of refugee and immigrant mothers and youths from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in North America. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 2023. Her thesis, “Times of Uncertainty and Future Projections for Forced Migrants: The Case of Syrian Refugee Mothers and Youths in Canada,” examines the temporal experiences and future projections of Syrian refugee mothers and teenagers after their resettlement in Canada.

Maggie O’Neill is Professor in Sociology & Criminology and Director of the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21) and UCC Futures: Collective Social Futures. Maggie is based in the Dept of Sociology & Criminology at University College Cork, Ireland. She works on issues of asylum, migration, borders and social justice using feminist, participatory, biographical, walking and arts based methods since the mid 1990s when she conducted AHRB funded participatory research with newly arrived Bosnian communities in the East Midlands, UK. Currently Maggie is PI on an IRC advanced Laureate Research Grant EUROBORDERWALKS with colleagues in the University of Zagreb and the University of Lodz.

Jeremaiah teaches research methods at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila. He does migration research for a nonprofit thinktank --the Institute for Migration and Development Issues (IMDI)-- as well as for UST. He also does migration journalism.

Meghann Ormond is Associate Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands. She's deeply invested in and concerned with how differently-mobile people's roots, rights and vulnerabilities are recognised and included in the places they visit and in which they live. Her research focuses mainly on how shifting visions and practices of citizenship and belonging transform transnational mobility, heritage, health and care relationships and practices.