People

Dr Mai Abu Moghli was UCL Active Citizenship strand manager, and a British Palestinian human rights activist, practitioner and academic based in London. Mai holds a PhD from the UCL Institute of Education. Her PhD research focus was on human rights education in Palestinian Authority schools in the Occupied West Bank. Mai holds a Masters degree in human rights from the University of Essex and has worked extensively in the fields of human rights and education in the MENA region. She is a policy member of the Palestinian policy network (Al-Shabaka) and an associate member of the SOAS Centre for Palestine Studies. Her current research focus is on violence in all boys Palestinian Authority Schools, refugee education and formation of identity in refugee situations. You can follow her on: @maimoghli. Email: mai.moghli.14@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Bayes Ahmed is a Lecturer UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. Bayes's research focuses on disaster risk reduction (DRR), conflict and migration, climate change adaptation, community vulnerability and resilience, and climate justice. He works in the intersection between conflict and disaster with a vision to help improving the living standards of forced migrants and stateless population. Email: bayes.ahmed@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Rob Aldridge is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer at the UCL-Institute of Health Informatics. Rob’s current research focuses on infectious disease epidemiology and the health inequalities faced by vulnerable, and often invisible populations, including migrants and refugees. Rob’s unique training in engineering, medicine and epidemiology allow him to carry out research using a range of methods including mathematical modelling of infectious disease, observational, interventional and cost effectiveness studies. He is a member of the UCL–Lancet Commission on Migration and Health. You can follow him on @rob_aldridge. Email: r.aldridge@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Charlotte Al-Khalili is a social anthropologist whose work explores the nexus between revolution, displacement and migration in Turkey and Europe. Her research focuses on Syrian revolutionary politics and subjects, religious imagination and migratory aspirations. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the CéSor EHESS and contributes to a project looking at the Syrian revolution, war and migration (SHAKK). Her current research project examines the notion of qadar (destiny) in the Syrian revolution and migratory trajectories. In her previous research (UCL MRU) mapped Syrian civil society’s answers to displacement in Turkey, tracing their origins to religious and political groups in the revolutionary and pre-revolutionary periods. Email: c.alkhalili@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Lauren Andres is Associate Professor in Urban Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning (UCL). Her research contribution spams the fields of urban planning, studies and human geography and has been focusing over the last fifteen years on understanding urban transformations, at different spatial and temporal scales and examined through different conceptual lenses. She has a keen interest in developing alternative models to understanding cities with key account of locality and context (temporary urbanism, alternative-substitute place making, responsible inclusive planning), to re-thinking systematically the connection between cities, planning, health and sustainability with a focus on the most vulnerable communities. I have recently been involved in several research looking at the impact of the COVID-19, on people (including refugees), places and policies. Email: l.andres@ucl.ac.uk

Ms Raphaëla Armbruster is Coordinator of Admissions for UCL's international foundation course at pre-undergraduate level, the Undergraduate Preparatory Certificate (UPC). She has also planned the Bowman Scholarship, which offer two students from forced migration backgrounds a full fee waiver for the UPC, on either the Sciences and Engineering or the Humanities and Social Sciences pathway. Following completion of the UPC, students have a qualification accepted by all UK universities, Russell Group included. Since 2016, she has been involved in the Refuge in a Moving World Education Sub-Committee, and in a number of projects at UCL (Pathways to Education for Women Refugees and Migrants, LCN Science and English Summer School). She also works as an educational mentor for the Refuge Support Network. Email: r.armbruster@ucl.ac.uk or clie-bowmanscholarship@ucl.ac.uk

Dr. Giovanna Astolfo is Teaching Fellow at the UCL-Development Planning Unit. Her research focuses on informal urbanisms, and bordering practices in the urban context. She is currently part of a interdisciplinary DPU research project on 'Refugee Cities. The actual space of migration'. Further research interests are related to the ethics of design, especially the social role of architects and the legacy of the community architecture movement. Email: giovanna.astolfo.13@ucl.ac.uk

Imogen Bakelmun works as the gender and migration officer and public engagement lead at the Centre for Gender and Global Health where her work focuses on community engagement, participatory creative projects, and issues surrounding reflective representation and critical visual cultures with a particular interest in race, racialisation and migration. She is currently working as the lead engagement practitioner and researcher on the SELMA project, a cross-institutional, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary collaborative migrant and refugee health policy project. She is also the lead on the Borderings: Migration, Gender and Health series. Email: i.bakelmun@ucl.ac.uk

Mette Louise Berg is Professor of Migration and Diaspora Studies in the UCL Social Research Institute. Mette is a social anthropologist with research interests in migration, diasporas and migrant transnationalism; urban diversity and conviviality; and notions and understandings of migrant deservingness and practices of solidarities. She is PI on Migrants and Solidarities, an international and comparative research project funded by Nordforsk. She is founding co-editor of Migration and Society, an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, and co-director of UCL’s Migration Research Unit. Email: mette.berg@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Camillo Boano is a Professor and Co-Director of the UCL Urban Lab at the UCL-Development Planning Unit. He is an architect and urbanist with interests in humanitarian urbanism, environmental forced migration, temporary shelters, post-disaster housing reconstruction, and communication in emergencies. He leads the DPU's project, Refugee Cities: the Actual Spaces of Migration. You can follow him on @CamilloBoano. Email: c.boano@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Beverley Butler is a Reader in Cultural Heritage at UCL Institute of Archaeology. Her key interests include: Critical Heritage perspectives, ‘Heritage Wellbeing’ and the transformative ‘efficacies of heritage’ particularly in contexts of marginalisation, displacement, conflict and extremis. Beverley has on-going long-term fieldwork research in the Middle East – notably in Egypt, Palestine and Jordan.  Her long-standing research collaboration with Dr Fatima Al-Nammari (Petra University Jordan) includes: Dislocated Identities and ‘Non-places’ – Heritage, Place-making and Wellbeing in Refugee Camps (2011- ongoing). Beverley is Co-Investigator on a joint ESRC/AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund research project with Professor Helen Chatterjee in collaboration with the Helen Bamber Centre which looks at the role of creative arts and cultural activities in improving health and wellbeing. Email: beverley.butler@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Estella Carpi is Research Associate at UCL-Development Planning Unit and Humanitarian Affairs Advisor at Save the Children UK. She is a social anthropologist who is coordinating a new project, Refugee Self-Reliance and Humanitarian Action in Urban Markets, at UCL. Her research interests lie primarily in humanitarianism, refugee migration, welfare, and politics of aid. You can follow her on www.mabisir.wordpress.com and @estycrp.Email: e.carpi@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Elaine Chase is Senior Lecturer in Education, Health Promotion and International Development in the Department of Education, Practice and Society at UCL-Institute of Education. Her research interests include the intersection between migration and wellbeing outcomes. Her current research investigates the outcomes for independent migrant and refugee children as they make the transition to ‘adulthood’. Email: e.chase@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Helen Chatterjee is a Professor of Biology in UCL Biosciences and Head of Research and Teaching in UCL Culture. Her museological research investigates the value of cultural participation to health, wellbeing and education. She has been PI on a number of projects including an ESRC/AHRC GCRF project entitled Co-developing a method for assessing the psychosocial impact of cultural interventions with displaced people: towards an integrated care framework, in collaboration with Dr Bev Butler, UCL Archaeology, Dr Fatima Al-Nammari at the University of Petra, the Helen Bamber Foundation and Talbieh Refugee Camp. You can follow her on @h_chatterjee. Email: h.chatterjee@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Jay Derrick worked for 30 years in Adult and Further Education as a teacher, manager and researcher before joining the Institute of Education in 2007 as a teacher educator. He led the Post-Compulsory PGCE programme for 5 years until 2017. He now teaches on the MA in Professional Education and Training, the MSc in Engineering and Education, on the ReConnect HE Preparation Programme for Refugees, and for the Doctoral School. He completed his Ed D in January 2019, on Learning and Innovation through workplace practice. Follow him via his occasional blog on http://jayoptimistic.blogspot.co.uk/, or on @JayDerrickIOE. Email: j.derrick@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Delan Devakumar is a Clinical Lecturer in the UCL Institute for Global Health. He is a medical doctor with experience in clinical paediatrics and public health. His research is on maternal and child health and is part of the Lancet Commission on Migration and Health. Email: d.devakumar@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Eve Dickson is a researcher in the Social Research Institute at UCL-IOE. Her research interests include migration and the intersections between welfare and migration regimes, gender, childhood and intersubjectivity. She is currently working on: Migrants and Solidarities: Negotiating deservingness in welfare micropublics, led by Prof. Mette Berg; Rationing deservingness in times of Covid-19: housing, place, and dispersal in Northern England; and Social reproduction in the shadows: migrant mothers and children with "no recourse to public funds", led by Dr Rachel Rosen. Email: eve.dickson@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Hakan Ergül is a lecturer and researcher at the UCL-Institute of Education, Dept of Culture, Communication and Media. Hakan’s recent research focuses on the role the digital and traditional media play in giving voice to the most vulnerable groups, leveraging solutions, and addressing inequalities in emergency context. Hakan has worked as communication expert for UNHCR, UNICEF and World Bank in different countries, including Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Morocco and Turkey. In collaboration with a number of academic institutions, research centres and humanitarian organizations, he has coordinated digital storytelling (DST) workshops with and for refugees and carried out ethnographic fieldwork in refugee camps. Email: h.ergul@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Director of the Refuge in a Moving World network and is Co-Director of the Migration Research Unit at the Department of Geography. Elena specialises in forced migration and conflict-induced displacement, with a particular thematic interest in gender, generation and religion, and a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. She is currently the PI of two major projects: Local Community Experiences of Displacement from Syria (funded by the AHRC-ESRC) and Analysing South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (funded by the European Research Council). You can follow her on @RefugeeHosts and @RefugeMvingWrld. E-mail: e.fiddian-qasmiyeh@ucl.ac.uk

Mr Aydan Greatrick is the Refugee Hosts Project Coordinator: Aydan is responsible for the coordination of the MRU based AHRC-ESRC funded Refugee Hosts project investigating Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Conflict-Induced Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. The project is led by Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. Aydan's research interests focus on the intersections of gender, sexuality and religion in responses to and engagements with forced migrants. Email: aydan.greatrick.15@ucl.ac.uk

Prof François Guesnet is Reader in Modern Jewish History in the UCL-Department of Hebrew and Jewish History. Migration has been a prominent feature in Jewish history from its inception, and forced migrations are part of this history of migrations. François works specifically on responses of Jewish communities to react - politically and socially - to such challenging situations in the early modern and modern period (16-19th centuries). You can follow him on @fguesnet. E-mail: f.guesnet@ucl.ac.uk

Kaidong Guo is a doctoral student at the UCL Social Research Institute. He is also an associate editor of the Reimagining Childhood Studies Website. His doctoral project explores the dynamics of family relationships and power relations in Chinese families where parents have migrated internally. He focuses particularly on left-behind’ children’s perspectives.  Prior to joining the UCL, Kaidong was awarded an MA Degree in Global Advertising and Branding with distinction from the University of Southampton and a BA Degree in Communications. Email kaidong.guo.20@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Humera Iqbal is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology at the UCL Social Research Institute, UK. She studies family life and young people. Her work looks at migrant and minority family life and practices, citizenship rights and activism in minority groups, social identity and parenting across generations. Her work also explores the influence of culture, nature and the arts on wellbeing and belonging. Humera uses mixed methods, arts and film-based methods in her research. Her current research project is called 'Partition of Identity: An exploration of Belonging in Bengalis in Pakistan, 1971- Present'. Twitter: @HumeraIqbal1

Dr Anne Irfan is Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies at UCL. Her research looks at colonial legacies in Middle Eastern displacement, focusing on the politics of Palestinian refugee history across the region since 1948. Her work also examines the historical trajectory of UN refugee regime in the Global South,  and the role of refugee communities in shaping it. She is Principal Investigator of the British Academy-funded project Borders, global governance and the refugee, 1947-51. Email: anne.irfan@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Cassidy Johnson is a Senior Lecturer at UCL-Development Planning Unit. She is an urbanist who is interested in migration and displacement in relation to urbanisation and urban life. Her core research focus is on disasters and post-disaster recovery, and this extends into looking at how people living through crisis situations make their way in the city, and how existing governance mechanisms can support them. Her projects include: Human, Economic, and Social Flows Beyond Crisis: Understanding the “Urbanitarian” (HESF), which is a DPU collaboration with Save the Children, UK; Reducing Relocation Risks and Urban Africa Risk Knowledge. You can follow her on @cassidyajohnson. Email: cassidy.johnson@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Sara Joiko holds a PhD in Sociology and Education Policy at the UCL Institute of Education. She is a Research Associate at the Instituto de Estudios Internacionales (INTE), Universidad Arturo Prat (Iquique, Chile) as well as a member of Rizoma Intercultural, a non-profit organisation, which support migrants in Chile. Her topics of interest are decolonial critical interculturality, migration, education policy and school-family relationship. She has published more than ten articles and book chapters and participated in various national and international conferences on migration, education, interculturality and human rights. Currently, she is working on a Postdoctoral Project (3210090) titled “The border as a symbolic and material demarcation in the educational experience of children, adolescents and their families in migratory contexts in Chile” E-mail: sara.joiko.14@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Ben Kaplan is Professor of Dutch History in the Department of History. He specialises in the history of relations between religious groups in early modern Europe – in essence, the history of religious toleration and conflict in Europe in the 16^th-18^th centuries. The history of early modern religious refugees is one important aspect of this topic. E-mail: b.kaplan@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Ilan Kelman is Professor of Disasters and Health at UCL and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, including the integration of climate change into disaster research and health research. That covers three main areas: (i) disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy ; (ii) island sustainability involving safe and healthy communities in isolated locations; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters. You can follow Ilan on @IlanKelman. E-mail: i.kelman@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Agnieszka Kubal is Lecturer in Sociology at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Agnieszka is an interdisciplinary socio-legal, migration and human rights scholar with area studies interest in Central Eastern Europe and Russia. At UCL Agnieszka has just completed her second monograph Immigration and Refugee Law in Russia. Socio-Legal Perspectives (2019, Cambridge University Press). It results from her British Academy post-doctoral research fellowship project (2013-2016). Agnieszka's research among undocumented Syrian asylum seekers in Russia together with her involvement in their case before the European Court of Human Rights resulted in a court decision LM and Others v Russia (2016) and a real impact beyond academia: establishing standards of protection of Syrians against deportation in all European countries. Email: a.kubal@ucl.ac.uk

Ambreen Lakhani works with an NGO that develops EdTech solutions for education in rural and marginalized communities in Bangladesh. Since 2017, she has been working on a EdTech pilot project in the Rohingya Refugee camp in Cox’s Bazaar. She is in the first year of her PhD and her research is focused on digital education solutions for professional development for Rohingya refugee teachers. Additionally, her other interests lie in community lead responses in conflict zones. Ambreen is a Teaching Assistant for the Master’s-level module in UCL’s Institute of Education's course Minorities, Migrants and Refugees in National Education Systems. Previously, she has worked as a teacher in Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia, and the US. Email: amrin.lakhani.20@ucl.ac.uk 

Dr Samar Maqusi is a research associate at the Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London (UCL), working with the RELIEF centre on a project in Lebanon, where she is researching modes of vitality in the refugee camp. An architect and urban specialist, Samar worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, where she held the post of Architect/ Physical Planner, and oversaw the Shelter Rehabilitation programme. She obtained her PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she researched refugee space-making in the Palestinian camp in Jordan and in Lebanon. Email: samar.maqusi.13@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Ruth Mandel is Vice-Dean International in the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, and a Reader in the Department of Anthropology. She has researched migration issues for several decades, primarily among migrants from Turkey in Germany, described in her prize-winning book, Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish challenges to citizenship and belonging in Germany (Duke Univ. Press). At UCL she has directed the series of international conferences and arts workshops Engaging Refugee Narratives: Perspectives from Academia and the Arts in 2016-17, where talks, demonstrations and interactive workshops have brought together arts practitioners and academics who all are engaged in work with refugees. E-mail: r.mandel@ucl.ac.uk

Mr Ricardo Martén is a PhD Candidate and Researcher at the UCL-Development Planning Unit. His interests lie in the urban dynamics between informality, violence and migratory trends, as well as the role of urban design as a theoretical complement to the production of space. Current research projects look to examine these elements, particularly focusing on the urban legacy of official spaces of exception and the resulting informal counter-narratives. E-mail: ricardo.caceres.09@ucl.ac.uk

Paul Moawad is an architect and an urban designer, currently completing his PhD at The Bartlett School of Planning (UCL). He is the founder of BeBeirut Architects, a pro-bono initiative launched after the Beirut Port blast rebuilding damaged residences and children’s playgrounds in partnership with local organizations. His PhD research focuses on temporary urbanism, borderland studies, informal settlements, Syrian refugees’ migration, and modalities of power and waiting in contested urban spaces. While co-leading with Dr. Lauren Andres the project ‘The impact of Covid-19 encampment mechanisms on Syrian refugees’ mobilities and vulnerabilities in Lebanon.’, he also recently join the ESRC/ ORA WHIG (What is Governed in Cities – PI Prof. Raco) as a researcher looking at European housing policies, governance and formal and informal regulatory processes in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Email: paul.moawad.19@ucl.ac.uk

Prof Richard Mole is Professor of Political Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has recently completed a three-year project examining the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer individuals in the context of (forced) migration to Europe. See more information about the project and videos from the associated workshops. Download the Open Access book on Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe (UCL Press, 2021). E-mail: r.mole@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Marta Niccolai is Teaching Fellow at the Department of Italian. Her research focuses on theatre events performed in war territories, primarily the Middle East, and in Europe, that explore human rights and refugees’ rights. She analyses the methodology applied and how the actor’s body and voice is used to encourage a deeper understanding between geographically and culturally different people who are brought closer by forced migration. E-mail: marta.niccolai@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Caroline Oliver is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCL, Institute of Education. Caroline’s work initially contributed to the emerging field of international retirement and lifestyle migration, with more recent research into family and forced migration. She explores how identities are shaped across the life course through migration and are influenced by state policies and interventions. She led a four-country comparative study of the rights and entitlements of Family Migrants in Europe. Most recently, she has focused on city-led innovation in asylum seeker reception in Europe, especially through a 3-year research and evaluation of the Utrecht Refugee Launchpad, which aimed to improve asylum seeker reception through principles of co-education and co-living with local city residents. From Jan 2022, she is co-editor in chief of the journal Evidence & Policy. Email: c.oliver@ucl.ac.uk Twitter: @CarolineJOliver

Dr Miriam Orcutt is a medical doctor and academic researcher currently coordinating the UCL-Lancet Commission for Migration and Health; she is a Research Associate at UCL’s Institute of Global Health. Her background is in medical anthropology and her current research explores refugee health, including through research with Syrian refugees in informal camps in Northern Greece. You can follow her on @miriamorcutt. Email: m.orcutt@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Tejendra Pherali is Senior Lecturer in Education and International Development at UCL-Institute of Education. His research focuses on education in conflict-affected societies and the role of education in post-conflict peace building. He is currently involved in research into educational challenges for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon and Jordan, and education for peace in Somaliland. You can follow him on @pherali. Email: t.pherali@ucl.ac.uk

Dr. Thibaut Raboin is Teaching Fellow at the Department of French. He is the author of Discourses on LGBT asylum in the UK: constructing a queer haven, published by Manchester University Press (2016), and has authored articles on LGBT asylum and homonationalism. His interdisciplinary research is based on the critical discourse analysis of French and UK public discourses, in particular in relation to race, sexuality, gender and migration, and the emergence and configuration of social problems in public arenas. Alongside his work on the discourses of forced migration, his current research concerns the expression of social suffering on the radio, with an attention to listening as both a mode of governmentality and a critical act. E-mail: thibaut.raboin.09@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Victoria Redclift is an Associate Professor of Political Sociology in the Social Research Institute at UCL. Her work pays particular attention to spatial formations of political exclusion, histories of displacement, the formation of diaspora, and the negotiation of local and transnational citizenship. Victoria is Trustee of the Bonnart-Braunthal Trust, which funds postgraduate research into the study of religious, racial and cultural intolerance, and she is on the Runnymede Trust Race Equality Academic Forum. She is currently co-PI on a new interdisciplinary project looking at the intersection of ethnic minority and sexual minority mental health, and is Co-I on the new CICADA-ME project, which investigates the experience of the recent pandemic among ethnic minorities with chronic conditions and disability, funded by the NIHR. E-mail: v.redclift@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Carol Rivas is Associate Professor in Social Policy and Programme Evaluation at the IOE - Social Research Institute. Her research aims to develop practical and theoretical understandings of vulnerability and social interaction to use with linked research outputs to support instrumental changes in policy and practice. Her focus is on so-called hidden disabilities (e.g. multiple sclerosis, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, diabetes, abuse, depression, developmental disorders, cancer), and on the intersection with race, ethnicity and migrant status. Her current project, CICADA-ME specifically examines this intersectionality in relation to pandemic formal and informal health and social care experiences. E-mail c.rivas@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Rachel Rosen: Rachel is an Associate Professor in Childhood in the Department of Social Science at UCL IOE. Her work explores stratification and bordering of the conditions in which life is made, and made meaningful, and in turn how children and their families in precarious migranthood sustain, weather, evade, care, and engage in solidaristic action. Her work contributes to debates about the politics of children and childhood; changing adult-child relations in the context of neo-liberal migration and welfare regimes; and how and to what effect children are involved in migration processes. She is currently co-leading an ESRC-project (Children Caring on the Move) and leading a BA/Leverhulme-funded project: Social reproduction in the shadows: migrant mothers and children with “no recourse to public funds”. She is Co_I on a Nordforsk funded project 'Solidarities: Negotiating migrant deservingness'. Email: r.rosen@ucl.ac.uk

Hannah Sender is a PhD student at the Development Planning Unit and Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity, at UCL. Her research focuses on the relationship between adolescence, urban change and mental health. Her PhD is about adolescents in small urban areas in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, where urban change has been shaped by protracted mass displacement from Syria. Hannah works in cross-disciplinary teams and with local researchers in Lebanon, the UK and Kenya. She develops creative and collaborative methodologies which support people – particularly adolescents – to be researchers of their own lives and neighbourhoods. Twitter: @HannahSender 

Wendy Sims-Schouten is Deputy Director of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor. Her research focuses on migration and health, with a specific interest in trauma and resilience of displaced children and adults. She has engaged in a number of projects comparing historic and contemporary practices in relation to mental health and wellbeing - such as in relation to the Kindertransport scheme, and the British Home Child Scheme, comparing this with current practices with displaced children and families. Email w.sims-schouten@ucl.ac.uk

David Suber is a freelance journalist, co-Director of the creative journalism collective Brush & Bow C.I.C and PhD researcher at the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science (University College London). Since 2015 his work focuses on migration, human smuggling, and organised crime in conflict countries, and has appeared on international platforms such as Al Jazeera, the New Arab and the Independent. At UCL he is establishing the Human Trafficking, Smuggling and Exploitation research group alongside other PhD students in the Security and Crime Science Department. David is also a film director, having directed two short animation films on deportations to Tunisia and forced return migration from Lebanon to Syria. He is currently working on a documentary series on pushback operations on the Balkan route, commissioned by the Border Violence Monitoring Network. With a team of investigative journalists, he won the 2019 Migration Media Award for a web-doc on the return of Syrian refugees from Lebanon. He is currently based in the UK and speaks Italian, English, and Arabic. Twitter: @davidlsuber Email: david.suber.19@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Alex Tasker is a Teaching Fellow in Human Ecology/Health and Environment in the Dept of Anthropology. Alex's research explores informal creativity and networks in communities at the peripheries of state and development systems. As a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, Alex examined informal agriculture within refugee settlements, focusing on dynamic and emergent relationships between the environment, indigenous and migrant communities, and policy-level actors. Building on research around refugee self-reliance, identity, livelihoods, and health, Alex’s current research explores zoonotic human-animal disease transfer and informal animal-human health networks around Kakuma Camp, Northern Kenya.  This project speaks to themes in Biological, Social, and Medical Anthropology, and wider debates within sister centres such as the Institute of Global Health and Migration Studies. Email: a.tasker@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Tatiana Thieme is Lecturer in Human Geography at UCL-Department of Geography. Her research interests engage with different aspects of austerity and makeshift urbanism, focusing on alternative cultural and economic geographies related to the politics of urban poverty, informal work, and everyday strategies in contexts of precarious urban environments. Building on her recent ethnographic work in Nairobi’s informal settlements and on-going work in London with offenders nearing the end of their prison sentence, Tatiana’s British Academy-funded project - Temporary migrants or new European citizens? Geographies of integration and response between ‘camps’ and the city - brings together her research interests in informality, labour limbo, and social navigation of uncertain urban life. More information about her new project is included below. E-mail: t.thieme@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Keren Weitzberg is a tech and migration researcher with 10+ years of experience in East Africa conducting fieldwork in cross-cultural, multilingual settings. Keren works at the intersection of science and technology studies, migration studies, and critical race studies, examining problematics related to mobility, digital identity, biometrics, and fintech. She has been published in a variety of forums, ranging from top academic presses to popular blogs, and has worked closely with a range of civil society organizations, non-profits, and artists. Her first book, We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya (2017) was a finalist for the 2018 African Studies Association Book Prize and named one of Quartz Africa’s favorite books of 2017. Her recent work has included a scoping project for Amnesty International called ‘Defending the Rights of Refugees and Migrants in the Digital Age’, a forthcoming moving-image work on the UK hostile environment with filmmaker Edwin Mingard, and projects on biometrics in the humanitarian sector and counterterrorism industry for Privacy International. Email: k.weitzberg@ucl.ac.uk. Twitter @KerenWeitzberg

Dr Tom Western is a Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at UCL. His teaching and research centre on the movement of movements, following how activisms travel, circulate, migrate; how citizenship struggles shuttle from place to place; how resistances resonate across anticolonial geographies and radical trajectories. Tom works in Athens, where he is a member of the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (SGYF), an international movement focused on building platforms for citizenship. With his colleagues in SGYF, Tom runs the Active Citizens Sound Archive – a space for amplifying this citizenship work, for community mobilising, and collective research and knowledge production. Email: t.western@ucl.ac.uk 

Dr Ralph Wilde (UCL Laws) is an expert in public international law, and also has an interest in the interface between international law and related academic disciplines, including international relations and legal and political theory.  His appointments include being Senior Research Associate at the Refugee Law Initiative of the Human Rights Consortium of the University of London School of Advanced Studies.  He is a long-standing member of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), having served as Rapporteur for one of the IASFM’s conferences. His research on migration has included work on UNHCR administration of camps housing refugees and IDPs, and the extraterritorial application of human rights and refugee law in the migration context, from sea-rescues to the extraterritorial posting of border officials.  His ongoing work on extraterritoriality is as PI of the project ‘human rights beyond borders’, funded by an ERC Starting Grant. More information, including publications, on Ralph is available [here] and on the human rights beyond borders project [see below and here]. You can follow him on @ralphwilde. E-mail: ralph.wilde@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Birgül Yılmaz is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at UCL Institute of Education. Building on her research in refugee camps, her postdoc deals with refugees' language practices and their language learning processes in other spaces such as squats and self-organised classes as part of their everyday struggle within urban social movements in Athens. Her research interests are language and migration, language and humanitarian governmentality, international law, critical/ discourse analysis, language and identity, intersections of language, gender, religion and social class. Twitter: b_yilmaz04. Email: birgul.yilmaz@ucl.ac.uk

Former members

Mr Tom Bailey was a Leverhulme Artist in Residence at UCL-Geography/Migration Research Unit. Tom is a theatre maker and director. Creating work through his company, The Mechanical Animal Corporation, he has developed work across the UK, and internationally in Egypt and Finland. He read English at UCL (2007). In 2016 he was making theatre with refugees in the Good Chance theatre in the Calais 'Jungle'. During his residency with the Migration Research Unit Tom researched and developed work that explored migration through live performance.

Prof Sarah Crafter was Senior Research Officer in the Thomas Coram Research Institute at UCL-IOE until joining the Open University. Sarah’s academic interests lie in the area of migration, diversity and the development of identities. By background she is a cultural-developmental psychologist whose work is grounded in sociocultural theory, transitions, critical or contested ideas of ‘normative’ development and cultural identity development. She has a longstanding interest in working with child language who are children and young people who translate and interpreter for family members after migration to a new country. She worked on research ('New families') that sought to explore the care of children, by other children when they are unaccompanied refugee minors, including as PI of a major research project led with Dr Rachel Rosen of the UCL IoE.

Dr Adele Galipo is a Lecturer in Migration and Global Health at QMUL. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the UCL Institute of Education whose research interests include transnationalism, diasporas and migrants return; urban diversity; development and humanitarian interventions; and nation-building processes. Her regional focus is the Horn of Africa, particularly the Somali region.

Dr Kristine Husøy Onarheim is a medical doctor and a global health researcher at the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting, University of Bergen. She was previously a research fellow in health policy at the Institute for Global Health. She worked on the SELMA project, which aims to study public policy responses to improve the sexual and reproductive health of migrants and refugees. In her PhD, Onarheim explored priority setting and intra-household resource allocation for newborn health in Ethiopia (University of Bergen, Norway). Her wide-ranging research on priority setting in global health include work on women’s health, children’s health, universal health coverage, migrant health, access to medicines, and governance. She has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University. As a medical doctor, she has clinical experience from Norway, Ethiopia and India. Onarheim was a founding member of the Lancet Youth Commission on Essential Medicines Policies and an intern at the WHO.

Dr Anna Marazuela Kim was a Visiting Research Fellow at UCL’s Institute for Advanced Studies in 2017-18. She is an art and architectural historian with research interests in iconoclasm, particularly in the realm of religious images; art and terrorism; and the relation of the built environment to human thriving. Anna worked with refugees and immigrants in the US during the Central American conflict and more recently in refugee camps in Greece, as a photographer. She is keen to bring her activism around refugees into the academic realm. You can follow her on @AnnaMarazuela.

Dr Amira Osman was a Visiting Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR). Dr. Osman's research interests include gender and forced migration, humanitarian intervention, conflict resolution and peace building, gender analysis, and the use of evidence to inform policy-making.