People

Bayes Ahmed (Inst for Risk & 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.

Lauren Andres (Bartlett School of Planning). 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. 

Giovanna Astolfo (Development Planning Unit). Her research focuses on informal urbanisms, and bordering practices in the urban contex. Further research interests are related to the ethics of design, especially the social role of architects and the legacy of the community architecture movement.

Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson (Risk and Disaster Reduction). Her research is broad and interdisciplinary with a particular focus on policy, intersectionality, and violence, as well as their overlaps with migration, refugees and trapped populations, trafficking or health and mental wellbeing.

Hanna Baumann (Institute for Global Prosperity). Her research is concerned with role of infrastructures of shaping urban exclusion and participation, especially of refugees and migrants.

Mette Louise Berg (IOE 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 founding co-editor of Migration and Society, an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, and co-director of UCL’s Migration Research Unit.

Camillo Boano (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.

Beverley Butler (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.

Estella Carpi (Inst for Risk & Disaster Reduction). She is a social anthropologist, her research interests lie primarily in humanitarianism, refugee migration, welfare, and politics of aid.

Elaine Chase (IOE - Education, Practice & Society). Her research interests include the intersection between migration and wellbeing outcomes.

Helen Chatterjee (Genetics, Evolution & Environment). 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.

Delan Devakumar (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.

Eve Dickson (IOE - Social Research Institute). Her research interests include migration and the intersections between welfare and migration regimes, gender, childhood and intersubjectivity. 

Hakan Ergül (IOE - Culture, Communication & 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. 

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (Geography) 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. 

Eva Gharibi (IOE - Psychology & Human Development). Her research focuses on understanding the views and experiences of refugees who have or are currently going through psychotherapy through the use of qualitative methods. 

François Guesnet (Hebrew and Jewish Studies). 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). 

Kaidong Guo (IOE - 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.

Humera Iqbal (IOE - Social Research Institute). 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.

Anne Irfan (Arts and Sciences BASc). 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.

Cassidy Johnson (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. 

Ben Kaplan (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.

Ilan Kelman (Inst for Risk & Disaster Reduction). 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.

Anna Koch (School of Slavonic and East European Studies). She is a historian of twentieth-century European history with a particular interest in histories of displacement, exile and return. 

Agnieszka Kubal (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. 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.

Ambreen Lakhani (IOE - Culture, Communication & Media) 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. 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.

Anna Maguire (History) is a historian of migration, war and empire in twentieth century Britain and the British Empire. 

Samar Maqusi (Civil, Environ &Geomatic Eng) 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.

Ruth Mandel (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.

Aine McAllister (IOE - Culture, Communication & Media). She is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Languages in Education and in Refugee Education. She has conducted research on the experience of refugees and asylum seekers seeking access to Higher Education and is developing engagement pathways with policy makers to reduce barriers to HE for refugees and asylum seekers.

Richard Mole (School of Slavonic and East European Studies). He completed a three-year project examining the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer individuals in the context of (forced) migration to Europe.

Caroline Oliver (IOE - Education, Practice & Society). 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. 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.

Miriam Orcutt (Institute of Global Health) is a medical doctor and academic researcher coordinating the UCL-Lancet Commission for Migration and Health. Her background is in medical anthropology and her research explores refugee health, including through research with Syrian refugees in informal camps in Northern Greece.

Tejendra Pherali (IOE - Education, Practice & Society). His research focuses on education in conflict-affected societies and the role of education in post-conflict peace building. He is involved in research into educational challenges for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon and Jordan, and education for peace in Somaliland.

Thibaut Raboin (French, SELCS). 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.

Mustafa Raheal (IOE - Education, Practice & Society). His research interests lie in social and developmental policies, with a particular focus on migration, conflict, education, humanitarianism, and the localization of aid. 

Victoria Redclift (IOE - Social Research Institute). 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. Co-PI on an interdisciplinary project looking at the intersection of ethnic minority and sexual minority mental health, and Co-I on the CICADA-ME project, which investigates the experience of the pandemic among ethnic minorities with chronic conditions and disability, funded by the NIHR.

Carol Rivas (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.

Rachel Rosen (IOE - Social Research Institute). 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.

Hannah Sender (Geography). She is interested in rapid urban change, particularly of small- to medium-sized urban areas, and displacement. Her research focuses on: property and rent; urban planning law, policy and practice; households, families and youth; displacement and migration; qualitative and creative research methodologies.

Wendy Sims-Schouten (Arts and Sciences BASc). 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.

David Suber (Security and Crime Science). 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.

Tatiana Thieme (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.

Andrea Verdasco (IOE - Social Research Institute). She is a social anthropologist working with migrant families including refugees. Her main research interests lie in understanding how refugees experience everyday life once they arrive and how they created social relations and a sense of belonging.

Tom Western (Geography). 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.

Ralph Wilde (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. 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.