Experts Database

Giacomo Palermo is a photojournalist and unconventional visual communicator working on sociological and humanitarian research in the Mediterranean area. He has collaborated as a photographer with Getty Images Inc., Touring Club Italia, Majority World CIC - Global - Photo Agency, The MEGA Agency, GEDI S.p.a Gruppo Editoriale, La Repubblica, National Geographic Italia, La Sicilia, La Discussione, Aleteia.org, America Oggi, La Voce di New York and other international magazines. He is a volunteer missionary at the "Speranza e Carità" O.n.l.u.s. mission in Palermo founded by his lay brother Biagio Conte. Winner in 2015 of the Special Prize of the "Federazione Italiana Associazioni Fotografiche" dedicated to the most influential Italian humanitarian photographer Tina Modotti. In 2021 his project entitled "TerrA MAGNUM (Mediterraneo)" was included in "The Magnum Connect Program" of the most important and prestigious photo agency in the world, Magnum Photos. He has exhibited in photography group shows such as the "International Centre of Photography" in Palermo founded by Letizia Battaglia.

Pau Palop-García (PhD, 2019) is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy (University of Erfurt) and a Research Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). He specializes in the study of migration policies and the political representation of migrant communities in their states of origin.

Pau Palop-García holds a PhD in Political Sciences from the Free University of Berlin and has published in academic journals such as Democratization, Citizenship Studies, or the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Carles Pamies is Adjunct Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher at Sciences Po, Paris, where he is also member of the ActEU project. His main research interests include political parties, political elites, and migrants' representation and voting behaviour.

Dr. Qiuping Pan is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Asia Institute, University of Melbourne and Deputy Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. Her research interests focus on the implications of transnational mobility on self-formation, entrepreneurship, and community self-organization at the grassroots level.

Apostolos G Papadopoulos has studied sociology in Greece (B.Sc. Department of Sociology, Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences) and in the UK (M.Sc (Econ), Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science) and holds a DPhil in Geography (University of Sussex). He was employed as researcher at the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE), the University of Patras and the Agricultural University of Athens. He was elected Lecturer in the University of Ioannina where he served for five years. He was elected Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography in Harokopio University, where, currently, holds the position of Professor in Rural Sociology and Geography. In the same university, he has been Director of Postgraduate Studies of the M.Sc. entitled: “Applied Geography and Spatial Planning” (2009-2011), Vice-Rector of Economic Affairs and Development (2011-2015), and Dean of the School of Environment, Geography and Applied Economics (2017-2018).

He has coordinated as project leader, while also he worked as a senior researcher in, several research projects financed by the European Commission, the Greek State and other organizations. He has published numerous papers in international journals (Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy; Agriregionieuropa; Applied Geography; Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali; Environment and Planning C; Europa XXI; Frontiers in Sociology; International Review of Sociology; Italian Review of Agricultural Economics; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Journal of Rural Cooperation; Journal of Rural Studies; Méditerranée; Migration Letters; Sociologia Ruralis; Southeast European and Black Sea Studies), in Greek academic journals (Γεωγραφίες; Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών; Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης; Κοινωνιολογική Επιθεώρηση), collected volumes and conference proceedings. He has edited or co-edited eight collected volumes (two of them were published by Ashgate Publishers in 1999 and 2010) and co-authored one book. His research has been published in Greek, English, Italian and Portuguese.

He has been member of the Working Group on Migration coordinated by the Prime Minister Office (Greek Prime Minister Office –Official Gazette (FEK) Issue 1650/25-08-2011). He was appointed as member of the Advisory Board (2017-2020) of the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM), which is a European Research and Education Organization with its headquarters located in Paris; for the last two-year period (2019-2020) he was elected Chair of this scientific advisory body.

From the position of President of the Hellenic Sociological Association (HSS) he has undertaken the task to organize in Greece one of the largest social science congresses. He was the Chair of the LOC for the organization of the 13th ESA Conference Athens: “(Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities”, 29 August to 1 September 2017. Consequently, he was elected member of the Executive Committee (EC) of the European Sociological Society (ESA) for two consecutive periods (2017-2019, 2019-2021) and Vice-President of External Affairs in the same organization for both periods.

Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of the international peer reviewed journal Sociologia Ruralis for four years (2020-2023) and Associate Editor of the journal NEW MEDIT: Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Environment. Moreover, he is member of the editorial board of the journals Migration Letters, Europa XXI and Κοινωνιολογική Επιθεώρηση; member of the international scientific board of the journals Border Studies, Social Studies [Studime Sociale], and Autonomie locali e servizi sociali; and member of the scientific board of the journal Social Cohesion and Development (Κοινωνική Συνοχή και Ανάπτυξη).

Francesco Pasetti is a Research Fellow at CIDOB in the area of Migrations and adjunct professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and at Pompeu Fabra University. His interest in “migration matters” dates back to his experience at the ASK Research Center (Bocconi University) where he developed a two-year project on diasporic media. Turned his attention to the world of politics, he delved into the study of migrant integration and its politics at GRITIM-UPF as PhD candidate. In his thesis, Pasetti addressed the issue of integration policies in Europe through a mixed-method investigation, paying special attention to the political imaginaries that lie beyond citizenship regimes in Italy and Spain. His expertise on integration policy grows in parallel as research collaborator for the Migration Policy Center (European University Institute) between 2013 and 2015. Since 2017, he has specialized in policy evaluation based on indicators. Currently, he is working on policies and political discourses on refugees, paying special attention to the Spanish context.

I study borders, mobility, and how experiences of precarious migration are shaped by histories and institutions. My interdisciplinary research has focused especially on Africa-Europe mobilities and questions of asylum, migrant reception, human rights, and racial justice in the Italian context. This work bridges critical refugee studies, transnational Italian studies, and postcolonial studies, through methods including media, narrative, and discourse analysis, and oral history and ethnography. In analyzing shifting border dynamics and engaging a range of testimonial and documentary forms and practices, I aim to inform understandings of the relationship between mobility, sovereignty, memory, rights, and belonging in and beyond Italy and the Mediterranean. I'm also interested in collaborative, comparative work and action research.

My book, Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, November 2024), investigates the discourses and experiences of “emergency” that are shaping contemporary Mediterranean migration to the EU.