Experts Database

Alex Bish is an independent researcher specialising on migration, conflict, and crime dynamics in West and North Africa. Over the past seven years, Alex has conducted in-depth fieldwork across West Africa and supervised field networks of key informants in both government and hard-to-reach groups, including rebels, militants, and smugglers. Alex is also an EPSRC PhD researcher in Security and Crime Science at UCL and a Visiting Scholar at Yale University. In addition to qualitative research, he is also trained in quantitative and complex systems research methods.

Dr. Urmi Nanda Biswas is working as a Professor, in the Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Gujarat. India. Her broad research interest includes applied social psychology and social issues with a focus on gender , health, and migrant vulnerabilities. She has worked on Tibetaan school children in exile in India and assessed the impact of life skill training on their adjustment and performance. Her current research exploresUnderstanding the vulnerabilities of Indian female migrants during COVID 19 pandemic: Rethinking policies for better integration of immigrant women’s work lives. She has over 25 years of teaching and research experience , has guided 15 Ph.D.s and has widely published in national and international journals.

Research Professor, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, and Professor of Sociology, University of Bergen

Dr. Jelisaveta Blagojević Miljanić serves as the head of the Library and Documentation Center and Archives of the Parliament of Montenegro, and as the Convener, she leads the Special Interest Group for Women, Information, and Libraries within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). During her doctoral studies, she received several scholarships that enabled research at La Sapienza University in Rome, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis University. She has published over 30 scientific papers, three of which appeared in journals indexed in the Social Science Citation Index list. She has participated in numerous conferences both domestically and internationally, is fluent in English, and proficient in French.

PhD candidate at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Warsaw.

Research interests:
-international migrations
-CEE labour markets
-racialisation and whiteness in the Eastern European context
-centre-periphery relations

PhD candidate, History

Im an anthropologist and a senior researcher at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), in Centre Norbert Elias, Marseille. I earned a PhD from Aix-Marseille Université on Senegalese migrant women traders in Marseille, a subject I continued to investigate for several years and which led to the publication of my book Travail, sexualité et migration : les commerçantes sénégalaises à Marseille. Before being recruited to the CNRS, I completed three post-doctoral studies and participated in several research projects. During these works I led a crossed reflection on the themes of women migration, migrant enterprise and return migration, while questioning the very notions of mobility and migration.
My current research project focuses on a comparative study of the uses of law and on return migration of the descendants of European emigrants from Latin America to several European countries.

Dr. Cristina BLANCO SÍO-LÓPEZ is 'Marie Skłodowska-Curie' Senior Global Fellow and Principal Investigator (PI) of the EU Horizon 2020 research project ‘Navigating Schengen: Historical Challenges and Potentialities of the EU’s Free Movement of Persons, 1985-2015’ (NAVSCHEN) —European Commission Grant Agreement (GA) No: 841201— at the European Studies Center (ESC) — EU Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence (JMEUCE) of the University of Pittsburgh and at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.
She previously was Assistant Professor in European Culture and Politics at the University of Groningen and ‘Santander’ Senior Fellow in Iberian and European Studies at the European Studies Centre — St. Antony’s College of the University of Oxford, where she remains a Senior Member.
Dr. Cristina Blanco Sío-López is Member of the Executive Committee of the Global Young Academy (GYA), where she holds the ‘Strategic Partnerships’ and the ‘Visibility and Impact’ Portfolios and directs the ‘Global Passport for Scholars’ (GPS) Initiative. She is also Co-Leader of the GYA project ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic and Art’ and received the ‘Sasha Kagansky’ Interdisciplinary Grant 2021/22 for the GYA project ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Personal Experiences of Global Young Researchers’. Furthermore, Dr. Blanco Sío-López is a Full Member of the Spanish Young Academy / Academia Joven de España (AJE), where she represents the field of History.
She is currently a UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab (IPL) Expert and Moderator of the 'Historical Legacies of Free Movement and Migration Policy-Making' IPL Team. She was Chair of the North America Chapter of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) in 2020-2021, which received the ‘Best Non-European Chapter Award 2020’ by the MCAA.