Experts Database

Tolga Sakman started his studies on Diaspora (especially Turkish Diaspora) during his Master's Degree and made several publications on the subject. He has also studies and published on migration and the security of migration. Having worked at a think tank and university, Sakman continues his doctoral studies.

Sanna Saksela-Bergholm Ph.D. (Sociology, University of Helsinki) explores in her current study the inclusion of migrants into working life. The objectives are two-folded: firstly, the aim is to analyse integration education programs’ “best practices” aimed at worklife inclusion of adult migrants into the Finnish and Canadian labor markets. Secondly, the aim is to develop a worklife integration model based on these best practices which will be pilot tested within the partner education programs. For students integrating in a country’s minority language, this integration into institutions of the national minority is of additional importance as the dominant environment is generally constructed around the majority language.
In her previous study she explored Filipino labour migrants’ inclusion to the Finnish labour market and their transnational ties back home. She analysed the role of social resources and networks in the lives of the migrants and their family members still living in the Philippines. Her study was part of the Academy Finland project ‘Transnationalism as a Social Resource among Diaspora Communities’. Saksela-Bergholm has planned and taught BA- and MA-level courses in migration studies.
She has studied migrants’ participation and inclusion to the receiving society by focusing on the following topics: the role of migrant associations; local and transnational practices; migrants’ access to informal and formal social protection; migrants’ access to labour market. In addition, she has acted as an expert for UNHCR, NGOs, national and local advisory boards.

Noel B. Salazar is a social and cultural anthropologist with expertise in border-crossing (im)mobilities. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia, Tanzania, Chile and Belgium. More information, including publications, is available at http://kuleuven.academia.edu/NoelBSalazar

Monika Salzbrunn holds a full professorship in „Religions, Migration, Arts“ at Lausanne University. She is the first female scientist in Switzerland to receive an ERC Consolidator Grant in Social and Human Sciences, for her project on ARTIVISM. Art and Activism. Creativity and Performance as Subversive Forms of Political Expression in Super-Diverse Cities. Prof. Salzbrunn was director of the Research Institute for Social Sciences of Contemporary Religions (ISSRC) from 2011 until 2015. Currently, she is the principal investigator of the projects „(In)visible islam in the city: material and immaterial expressions of muslim practices within urban spaces in Switzerland“ and "Undocumented Mobility (Tunisia-Switzerland) and Digital-Cultural Resources after the 'Arab Spring'", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Laure Sandoz currently works as a scientific officer at the Swiss centre of expertise in life course research LIVES. She previously conducted research on transnational entrepreneurship at the University of Neuchâtel, as part of the NCCR On the Move, an interdisciplinary project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which aims to enhance the understanding of contemporary migration patterns. She obtained her PhD from the University of Basel in May 2018 for her project on the mobility of the “highly skilled” towards Switzerland.

İlke Şanlıer Yüksel is an associate professor in the School of Communications and serves as the Director of Migration and Development Research Center (MIGCU) at Çukurova University. She got her BA degree from Sociology Department at Boğaziçi University and a PhD degree from Communication program at Anadolu University. Her research mainly focuses on the sociology of migration. She works on the media’s role in diasporic cultures. She is also interested in transnational politics through mediated settings, visual culture and media ethnography. She has a long experience in field research and ethnographic research on migrants. Her current interests also include local cinema history. She is the co-investigator for Topological Atlas: Mapping Contemporary Borders (H2020-ERC) and external expert for Global Asylum Governance and European Union's Role (ASILE) project which is funded under H2020 scheme. She has previously worked as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Migration Research Center at Koç University and as an assistant professor at Doğuş University in Istanbul. She served as a researcher for “Transnational Migration in Transition: Transformative Characteristics of Temporary Mobility of People (EURA-NET)” (EU FP7) project for the Turkish team.

Maria Teresa Santos is a PhD candidate in migration at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT), University of Lisbon. Her professional background includes nearly 20 years experience managing European Union and Portuguese cooperation projects mostly in Portuguese Speaking African Countries and East-Timor. After taking her MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, she now turns her focus to the European continent and specifically to the relation between migration and development within the European Union space.

In her PhD research she takes as her point of departure the destruction of the imaginary frontier that separates the underdeveloped global south from the developed global north. By exposing the dynamics of the latest stage of capitalism, she shows that the global north is also a space of unequal development not only between countries but also between regions, where the Intra-EU migration flows represent a symptom of this uneven development. This perspective allows her to place the migration and development debate within the uneven geographical development of the European Union.

In particular she pretends to research the contribution of Portuguese migrants in Germany to the development of Portugal and its regions. Using the lenses of critical realism, social space theory and political economy analysis she pretends to reflect on both commonalities and differences between migrants and non-migrant’s actions restructuring space and scale processes under neoliberalism. She takes a multi-scalar, multi-sited perspective as methodological options to pursue research in the uneven global north evidencing the relevance of the migration and development debate in a renewed geography of capitalism, re-centering the importance of space and territory.

Swakshadip Sarkar is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Their current research seeks to examine the policy issues that affect transgender asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and Aotearoa New Zealand. The purpose of their research is to inform the actors involved in policy-making to bring forward the issues faced by transgender asylum seekers from an intersectional perspective.

Tabea Scharrer is Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany). She does research in Migration Studies, Urban Anthropology, and Social Anthropology. Her current projects deal with return migration of Somali forced migrants from Europe to East Africa as well as with Somalian migrants in Germany.