Gemechu Adimassu Abeshu
Postdoctoral Fellow, Sociology, York University
Gemechu Abeshu is a researcher with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Bayreuth University of Germany, and M.A. in Governance and Development from Antwerp University of Belgium. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, his research interests broadly are refugee integration; internally displaced persons; emerging new forms of non-state powers; and conflict studies. Currently, he is a postdoc fellow at York University conducting research on the experiences of racialized blackness among Ethiopian refugees in Canada (partnering with Oromo Canadian Community Association of GTA). Dr Abeshu is also working as a researcher at Access Alliance on “Impact of Social Isolation on Refugee Children and Youth, their Resilience and Coping Mechanism” funded by CYRCC.
Regional interests: East Africa, Canada.
Email: abeshugemechu@gmail.com
Sharryn Aiken
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University
Prof. Aiken's research focuses on migration law and policy in context. More specifically, much of her current scholarship engages with the controversies, complexities and challenges posed by immigration and border security measures as well as the impact of these measures on asylum seekers, refugees and the communities they have established in Canada. A parallel research interest concerns the theory and practice of citizenship in ethnically divided societies.
Email: aiken@queensu.ca
Bree Akesson
Associate Professor and Associate Director, Centre for Research on Security Practices; Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University
Prof. Akesson's research program examines the impact of extreme adversity on family wellbeing, with a specific focus on families affected by war.
Email: bakesson@wlu.ca
Idil Atak
Associate Professor, Department of Criminology. Cross-appointed to Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University
Research areas: criminalization of migration; human rights of non-status migrants and asylum seekers in Canada; implementation by Canada of the United Nations Global Compact for Migration
Email: idil.atak@torontomu.ca
Janet Mancini Billson
Affiliate Member, Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, Orono
Janet Mancini Billson, PhD, CCS, is former Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Rhode Island College and The George Washington University. She received her graduate degrees in Sociology from Brandeis University, and has lectured widely on women in development, female well-being, Inuit resettlement, and the Millennium/Sustainable Development Goals.
Janet is the author of several books on identity, marginality, refugees/resettlement in Canada, and social change, including Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness (forthcoming 2023); Refugee Pathways to Peace: Escaping the Chaos of War (forthcoming 2024); People of Peace: The Doukhobor Search for Freedom in Canada (forthcoming, 2023); and Keepers of the Culture: The Power of Tradition in Women's Lives (1995), based on eight years of interviews with indigenous, immigrant, and religious minority women in Canada. She is co-author of Female Well-Being: Towards a Global Theory of Social Change with Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (2006); Inuit Women: Their Powerful Spirit in A Century of Change with Kyra Mancini (2007, based on twelve years of ethnographic research on Baffin Island); and Cool Pose: Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America with Richard Majors (1992/1993).
As founder and Director of Group Dimensions International, Janet has consulted since 1981 in organizational development, international development, and social policy. Her clients include foundations, hospitals, universities, and government agencies in Canada and the U.S; the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the African Development Bank; research organizations such as IDRC, Canada, and several United Nations agencies. She recently conducted the qualitative research to evaluate the World Bank’s Group’s Global Gender Strategy and the IFC’s investment role in private education in developing countries.
Email: jmbillson@gdiworld.com
Laura Bisaillon
Associate Professor, Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough
Research interests: Canadian immigration medical inadmissibility; feminism; forced migration; Horn of Africa; institutional ethnography; medicine and the law; minoritization; social studies of HIV/AIDS; sociology of health and illness.
Email: laura.bisaillon@utoronto.ca
Nimo Bokore
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Carleton University
Research interests: Neuroscience and social work; forced migration, resettlement and integration; historical trauma and trauma transference; refugee narratives and memory; attachment and Epigenetics; mental health and healing alternatives; Black feminist and structural theory; poverty, policy, geopolitics, and the impacts of racism, marginalization, social/economic exclusion on communities.
Email: nimo.bokore@carleton.ca
Pablo Bose
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Vermont
Research interests: Refugee resettlement in non-traditional destinations, food and migration, environmental displacement, Kolkata and Globalization, technology, education and representation.
Email: Pablo.Bose@uvm.edu
Bronwyn Bragg
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bronwyn is a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellow whose work addresses how migrant and refugee families navigate life in Canada’s uneven urban landscapes, shaped by a housing affordability crisis, income polarity and diminished protections from a shrinking welfare state. Her dissertation research examined the placemaking strategies of refugee mothers living in a mini-enclave in a marginalized neighbourhood in Calgary, Alberta. Her current work examines the complex geographies of vulnerability that shape the experiences of migrant-refugee workers in Alberta’s meat processing industry. Bronwyn’s work has been published in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies and Migration Studies.
Bronwyn is currently a co-investigator on the SSHRC funded project COVID-19 Among Meatpacking Workers: Documenting Migration Status and Employment Conditions in Southern Alberta.
Research interests: Legal status, citizenship, cities, gender and families, labour geographies, qualitative research methods
Email: bbragg@yorku.ca
John Carlaw
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CERC Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University
Research interests: Citizenship, Immigration and Refuge Policy, Multiculturalism, Political Narratives and Discourses, Migration, Political Economy, Canadian Politics, Political Parties, International Relations
Email: john.carlaw@torontomu.ca
César Castilla
Independent Scholar
Dr. Castilla has a PhD in International Relations from Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Master in Geopolitics and International Relations (Sciences Po Toulouse), Master's in International Affairs Asia-Pacific (Université de La Rochelle). He is a former member of the research group on MENA at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) 2016-2022. He is a researcher on Human Mobility with more than five years of experience in the Cultural Integration of refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Colombia and Venezuela settled in Ecuador. Experience in project management with a gender approach for people in need of international protection (Program for the cultural Integration of Refugees and Migrants UH-UNHCR, June 2016-January 2020). Trained in Asylum procedures, Interview Techniques and Interpretation (November 2021) and Translation workshop with refugees (October 2016) UNHCR – Quito. Translator at Humanitarian Organizations. Research interests in Afghan, Colombian and Venezuelan Diasporas and Middle East Conflicts.
Email: ccpublications99@gmail.com
Tom Clark
Community Scholar
Research interests: Tom Clark, now retired, was the national coordinator of the then “Inter-Church Committee for Refugees” in Canada. His interests include: addressing wars and conflicts producing refugees; UNHCR international protection policies; realizing human rights, domestic and international treaty, for refugees in domestic proceedings. He authored two books: Singh to Suresh: Non-Citizens, the Canadian Courts and Human Rights, 2006; and The Global Refugee Regime: Charity Management and Human Rights, 2008.
Email: tom.clark@kos.net
Christina Clark-Kazak
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa
Research interests: Gender Studies, Development Studies, Women’s Studies, International Studies, Feminist Theory, Peace and Conflict Studies, International Development, Qualitative methodology, Foreign Policy Analysis, Policy Analysis/Policy Studies, Youth Studies, Qualitative Methods, Political Behaviour, Political Participation, Quantitative Methods (Sociology), Children Geographies, Narrative Methodology, and Research Methodology
Email: cclarkka@uottawa.ca
Kathryn Dennler
PhD, Geography, York University
Kathryn Tomko Dennler recently earned a PhD in Geography from York University and a diploma in Refugee and Migration Studies from the Centre for Refugee Studies. Her dissertation research examined the effects of living with precarious immigration status and uncertainty about future stay in Canada on the geographies of everyday life in Toronto. She has worked on refugee issues as an educator, researcher, and advocate in the U.S., Austria, U.K., Canada, and Greece. Research Interests: Temporalities of migration, changes in immigration status, and the deportation process for refused refugee claimants
Email: ketdennler@gmail.com
Minakshi Das
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health, York University, Researcher, Global health governance, Community health governance, Refugee integration, well-being and governance
Minakshi Das is an experienced educator and community engagement researcher with 15 years of professional experience in the realm of Social/Public Policy with the right blend of research, training, and program management. Dr. Das has a Post-Doctoral degree in Political Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her expertise in maternal and child health well-being expanded her research horizon into refugees' access to health care, interdisciplinary research in public health, health systems, and policy, gender equity, human rights, and environmental health governance. She has been working ardently for Afghan refugee integration and their mental health and well-being in India, the UK, and Canada having working associations with UNHCR, UNFPA, and UNICEF. As an ardent advocate of human rights in practice, she has extensive global fieldwork experience with disadvantaged regions and vulnerable communities.
Research Interests: Refugee health and well-being, integration, human rights, governance, gender studies, peace and conflict studies, International development, development management, diversity, inclusion and equity, political economy, and corporate social responsibility.
Email: minakshid35@gmail.com
Jasmin Lilian Diab
Community Scholar
Jasmin is a Canadian-Lebanese researcher, writer, editor, reviewer, instructor and consultant in the areas of Forced Migration, Gender and Conflict. She is the Refugee Health Program Coordinator at the American University of Beirut’s Global Health Institute, as well as a Research Associate on the Political Economy of Health in Conflict under their Conflict Medicine Program. In other roles, she serves as the Institute’s Project Coordinator and Editor of its ‘South of Global Health’ Blog, and develops coursework and modules for its Humanitarian Leadership Diploma and Conflict Medicine Certificate. Jasmin additionally serves as the MENA Regional Focal Point on Migration of the United Nations General Assembly-mandated UN Major Group for Children and Youth, and as a Senior Consultant on Forced Migration and Gender at Cambridge Consulting Services.
She is a Founding Member of the ‘Migration and International Law in Africa, Middle East and Turkey International Network’, dedicated to the research of Migration through the Global South, an Adjunct Professor in Gender and Migration at the Fatima Al-Fihri Open University, and a Junior Fellow at the ‘War, Conflict and Global Migration’ Think Tank of the Global Research Network. Jasmin is completing a PhD in International Relations and Diplomacy with an emphasis on Asylum, Refugees and Security at the esteemed Centre d’Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques, INSEEC U. in France. Her dissertation is titled: ‘Migrant Rights and Migrant Wrongs: Bilateral Relations, Asylum and Security under the Safe Third Country Agreement,’ and explores the legitimacy of the Agreement as it stands within international legal frameworks.
Research Interests:
Forced Migration, Displacement, International Migration and Refugee Law, Immigration and Asylum Policies, MENA Region, Border Management, Gender and Conflict Studies, Refugee Health, International and Bi-lateral Relations.
Email: diabjasmin@gmail.com
Cem Dogan
Independent Scholar
Dr. Dogan has been living in Toronto / Canada for five years. Before coming to Canada, he was an Associate Professor of Economics in Turkey for the past 20 years. His main research interests focus on political economy, applied macro-micro economy, underdevelopment, econometrics, public economy and income distribution, poverty, and the vicious cycle of poverty as well as the parameters concerning these subjects. He has also worked on unemployment, foreign trade, and globalization, trying to identify the clues of a life where the distribution of income is fairer, basic human needs are free and jobs are available for everyone. Dr. Dogan has a great interest in city life and its effect on the economy, resulting in papers on football, human rights, and urbanization. Additional research interests include Middle East histories as a social science.
Email: cemodenodogan18@gmail.com
Moira Dustin
Lecturer, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex
Moira's research interests are gender, sexuality, migration, equality, human rights, religion, culture and multiculturalism. Her research to date has been in two areas: the experiences of women and LGBTIQ+ people claiming asylum and the rights of minoritised women in Europe.
Email: m.dustin@sussex.ac.uk
Noheir Elgendy
Assistant Professor, University of Cairo
Noheir Elgendy is an Urbanist and Assistant Professor of Urbanism and Architecture Criticism at Cairo University. Her research interests focus on urban policies pertaining to informal settlements, refugees, and urban minorities, and covers the urban implications of population displacement, forced migration and asylum. Her current research examines the second wave of the Syrian refugees and the (re) settlement and integration processes.
Email: noheir@gmail.com
Claire Ellis
Operations Manager at CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University
Claire Ellis is Operations Manager at CERC Migration. She has over a decade of experience in project and program coordination, working across multiple settings including not-for-profit organizations, international research teams, government and community advocacy. Previously, Claire has coordinated several programs at Toronto Metropolitan University including onBoard Canada, Global Diversity Exchange, and The Chang School’s Gateway Programs for Internationally Educated Professionals.
Claire also brings specialized knowledge and experience in immigration and refugee research and policy. She holds an MA in Immigration and Settlement Studies and is currently a PhD Candidate in Policy Studies (Migration Stream). Her doctoral research critically analyses the use of digital border and surveillance policy instruments in Canadian responses to refugee claimant onward mobility. She also works with a research team examining the nature, scope, and human rights impacts of Canadian border control, externalization, and detention practices on migrants and refugee claimants.
Email: claire.ellis@torontomu.ca
Hilary Evans Cameron
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University
A former litigator, Hilary Evans Cameron represented refugee claimants for a decade and now holds a doctorate in refugee law from the University of Toronto. A major focus of her work has been the process of judging a refugee claimant’s credibility. Her research brings insights from the social sciences, particularly cognitive psychology, to bear on this central aspect of refugee status decision-making. She has also explored other legal barriers that prevent people without status from accessing the courts and from winning their cases on judicial review. Her interest in clinical legal pedagogy arose from her experience teaching at the legal clinic of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, where she developed a method for involving law students in stopping deportations.
She is the author of Refugee Law’s Fact-finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake (Cambridge 2018) and has written in a number of journals including the International Journal of Refugee Law; Canadian Journal of Administrative Law and Practice; Journal of Law and Social Policy; Canadian Journal of Human Rights; Dalhousie Law Journal; UBC Law Review.
Before coming to Toronto Metropolitan University, Evans Cameron was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School, as well as a lecturer at Trinity College in the University of Toronto in the Ethics, Society and Law program. She was the SSHRC’s 2017 Bora Laskin National Fellow in Human Rights Research.
Email: h.evanscameron@torontomu.ca
AMM. Fahath, PhD
Chairperson to the Council of Justices of the Peace of Sri Lanka
AMM. Fahath is a qualified peace and human rights activist. He received a Doctorate in Peace and Humanities in 2019. He became the life-time Chairperson of the Council of Justices of the Peace, Sri Lanka from 2012. AMM. Fahath has also participated in international conferences related to human rights, peace, media and journalism in various countries such as Geneva, India, Dubai, Germany, France and Sri Lanka. In recognition of his peace work, the International Commission of Human Rights and Peace in India presented him with an award and a certificate of appreciation in 2019.
Research interests: Peace and conflict, human rights and minority issues, good governance, civil society, migration and development, refugee rights, peace and security research, human security, and human development, United Nations Sustainable Goals for Peace, media and digital advocacy, journalism and communication
Email: fahath@cjpsrilanka.lk
Martha Ferede
Researcher and Consultant, Ed.D.
Geopolitical issues, foreign policy and strategic dimensions of security including energy security with focus on the Former Soviet States and India, multilateral organisations like SCO, BRIC, CSTO, NATO and EU.
Email: mkf673@mail.harvard.edu
Adèle Garnier
Assistant Professor, Départment de géographie, Université Laval
Broadly, the role of institutional dynamics from the local to the international level in refugee and migration policies, with a particular focus on refugees’ labour market participation, refugee resettlement, and consequences of restrictive admission policies.
Email: Adele.Garnier@ggr.ulaval.ca
Sasha Guney
Community Scholar, LLM, Master of International Law
The relationship journalism and freedom of the press has with: international criminal law; the role and function of international organizations and tribunals operating in this area; theoretical and practical aspects of international instruments and tools for the prevention and punishment of international and transnational crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, organized crime, and human trafficking.
Email: sacha.guney@gmail.com
Hassan Noor Hussein
Community Scholar
Hassan Noor Hussein holds a Masters Degree of Education in Language, Culture and Teaching
from York University -Canada. He also has a Bachelor degree from Kenyatta University, and
Diploma in Project Planning and Management. A teacher by profession, he also has over 12 years
of experience working in humanitarian organisations at different scales, supporting vulnerable
populations and providing humanitarian services. Some of these organizations include: African
Development Emergency Organisation, CARE international, Center for Victims of Torture, Islamic
Relief Kenya, Windle international Kenya, the Horn of Africa Peace Network, International Medical
Corps, UNHCR and Somali Women and Childcare associations. Having lived for about two
decades as well as studied and taught at the primary level, in the Dadaab Refugee Complex, he
is determined to advocate for youth and work hard to make Education accessible and affordable
for all. His research interests include malnutrition, equity and equality of access to education, and
understanding the barriers that prevent access to learning in the context of a war torn and
currently rebuilding Somalia.
Dahabo Abdi Ibrahim
Community Scholar
Dahabo Ibrahim graduated with a Masters in Education from York University. She also holds a
BA in Educational Studies at York University, a Diploma in Business Management and
Administration from Cambridge International College, as well as a Diploma in Sociology from the
University of Nairobi. She is professionally trained as a teacher at both primary and secondary
levels of education, and has worked as both a teacher as well as a social worker in child protection
for over 10 years in Dadaab. In Dadaab she acquired extensive familiarity and experience in
working in the humanitarian sector, assisting fellow refugees, IDPs and vulnerable populations
affected by natural and manmade disasters. She also positively contributed as both counselor
and mentor to the empowerment and academic success of many younger refugee girls living in
the camps in Dadaab - especially throughout the heavily gendered impact of the COVID 19
pandemic in the camps. After almost two decades in the camps in Dadaab, she has recently
repatriated to Kismayo (Somalia) and would like to continue exploring the effects of climate
change on learning and teaching in conflict affected countries. Her MEd major research work
explored the role of climate justice education in protecting from environmental degradation and
its complex interplay with the struggle for women rights in Dagahaley camp-Dadaab, Kenya. She
was the inaugural recipient of CRS’s Anthony Richmond Scholarship Award (2020-2021).
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Heather Johnson
Senior Lecturer, School of Politics and International Studies, Queen’s University Belfast
I am interested in the politics of migration and border security, and particularly in the shifting international refugee regime and the politics of irregularity and irregular migration. I study how different kinds of geopolitical spaces, particularly at borders, impact and shape the political agency of migrants – and how these impacts are challenged and resisted from the ‘ground level.’ I am interested in the politics of citizenship, nationalism and security, but with a specific focus on those “outside” of our traditional political categories. In pursuit of this, I conduct field research in refugee camps, detention centres and border areas in Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and Australia. I look at how the voices and narratives of migrants can shape and change our understandings and imaginings of central political concepts such as conflict, belonging, identity, and citizenship. My current project examines the journeys and routes of migration to and from global border sites.
Email: h.johnson@qub.ac.uk
Rola Koubeisy
Researcher
Research interests: Intercultural pedagogy, sociocultural approach, inclusive education, language policies and academic integration of immigrant students, teaching in a multiethnic context.
Email: rola_koubeisy@hotmail.com
Audrey Macklin
Professor & Rebecca Cook Chair in Human Rights Law, University of Toronto
Research interests: Transnational migration, citizenship, forced migration, feminist and cultural analysis, and human rights.
Email: audrey.macklin@utoronto.ca
Kevin McKague
Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor, Cape Breton University
Kevin McKague is a Canada Research Chair in Social Enterprise and Inclusive Markets and Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at Cape Breton University. His research interests focus on the role of sustainable local enterprise and self-reliant income generating opportunities in supporting the social and economic wellbeing of refugees and migrants. Kevin is currently leading a $1.5M IDRC-funded research project on social enterprise business models for community health workers in South Sudan www.SouthSudanHealth.com. Kevin has previously led major research initiatives for the World Bank, UNDP, IDRC and CARE.
Email: kmckague@gmail.com
James Milner
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Carleton University
Research interests: Refugees, peacebuilding, African politics and the United Nations system
Email: James_Milner@carleton.ca
Petra Molnar
Lawyer and Researcher, and Refugee Law Lab Associate Director
Petra Molnar is a lawyer and researcher specializing in technology, migration, and human rights. She is currently working with EDRi, Homo Digitalis, and other partner organizations on a project looking at the impacts of migration control technologies on the lives of people on the move, funded by the Mozilla and Ford Foundations. Petra also works on issues around immigration detention, health and human rights, gender-based violence, and the politics of refugee, immigration, and international law. Her work has appeared in numerous academic publications and the popular press, including the New York Times. Petra is also the co-author of “Bots at the Gate,” an internationally recognized report on the human rights impacts of automated decision-making in immigration and refugee systems. She holds a Master of Arts in Anthropology from York University, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M in International Law from the University of Cambridge.
Email: pmolnar@yorku.ca
Mulry Mondelice
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean National Defence, Government of Canada
Research interests: International Law and diplomacy, International Relations
Chizuru Nobe-Ghelani
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Renison University College, University of Waterloo
Research interests: The politics and policies pertaining to migrant communities, particularly with regards to the colonial and racial politics of Canadian citizenship, historical and contemporary immigration, refugee and citizenship policies, and Indigenous-Migrant relations.
Sofia Noori
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Research interests: Refugee Subjectivity & Identification, Refugee Health & Development, Refugee Youth/ Adolescents. Sofia has recently defended her dissertation, entitled “Living within Hyphenated Paradoxes – The Canadian Adolescent Refugee Experience.”
Email: sofia.noori@ubc.ca
Peter Nyers
Professor, Department of Political Science, McMaster University
Research interests: Investigating how the claims made by politicized groups of non-status people are transforming established norms about citizenship and political community. Social movements of non-status refugees and migrants. In particular their campaigns against deportation and detention and for regularization and global mobility rights.
Email: nyersp@mcmaster.ca
Abulogn Okello
Community Scholar
Abulogn Okello holds a Bachelor of Education (Arts) degree and a Master of Education degree
from York University, acquired through the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER)
Project. Additionally, he possesses a Diploma in Education (Arts) with a specialization in English
and literature from Moi University in Kenya, along with a diploma in counseling psychology from
the Kenya Institute of Social Work and Community Development. His professional experiences
include serving as a Program Mentor (PM) for the cohort of Certificate students in the BHER
project as well as teaching in both elementary and secondary schools within the Dadaab Refugee
Complex. Actively engaged in his community, I currently hold the position of Director for Hope for
Displaced Community (HDC): a community-based organization dedicated to supporting and
empowering individuals forcibly removed from their homes. Our mission at HDC is to furnish them
not only with the essentials for survival but also with the tools to rebuild their lives with dignity,
hope, and self-reliance. Moreover, he is the founder of Ruiru Accelerated Learning Program, a
community-driven initiative addressing the unique educational needs of refugee women and girls
from conflict-ridden regions, aiming to provide them with educational opportunities and foster their
empowerment.
Email: oabulony@gmail.com
Omot Oman Obono
Community Scholar
Omot Oman Obono is a recently repatriated Ethiopian national, who lived as a refugee in Dadaab
from 2004 to June 2023. He is currently living in Gambella (Ethiopia) hoping to contribute to the
development of the nation with his newly gained knowledge and skills. He holds a BA In
Educational Studies as well as a Masters In Education, both conferred by York University. He has
over 20 years of work experience in leadership roles at both levels of community and humanitarian
organizations. Professionally, he is both a humanitarian worker and teacher at the primary and
secondary levels. As a researcher he successfully conducted a major research study which
explored Dadaab youth’s voices and perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic, on institutional
policies and responses as well as their impact on schools in Dadaab refugee camp primary
schools. He is hoping to apply his skills and knowledge to investigate the challenges hindering
the quality of learning and teaching practices at the primary education level in the Internally
Displaced People Camps (IDPs) in Gambella -Ethiopia. His goal is to explore the participants'
view on access to quality education and policy gaps, and make recommendations that would
contribute to the review of current educational policy.
Kayode Oladapo Opasina
Senior Research Consultant
Research interests:
- Comparative Politics; International Relations; Governance; & Socio-economic Issues;
- State-building and Peacebuilding in Fragile and Post-Conflict Societies; Elections;
- African Affairs; Indigenous (Traditional) Institutions; Security and Organized Crime;
- Peace and Conflict Studies; Gender Studies; Children and Youth’s Development;
- Migration & Humanitarian issues relating to Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs);
- Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods
Email: kayode.opasina@gmail.com
Gamze Ovacık
Postdoctoral Researcher, McGill University Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism
Gamze Ovacık is a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and her areas of interest and expertise are migration and asylum law, international law and human rights law. She has been teaching in these fields at Başkent University Faculty of Law where she holds a position as an assistant professor.
In 2022-2023, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Gothenburg Department of Law within the ASILE Project on global asylum governance and the European Union’s role. She completed her Ph.D. at Bilkent University Faculty of Law in 2021 during which she conducted a comparative analysis of Turkish and European judicial practices on asylum, removal and immigration detention against the background of Turkey’s position as a safe third country. During her Ph.D. studies she joined Radboud University Centre for Migration Law as a visiting researcher in 2019-2020. Since 2012 she has worked with UNHCR, IOM and ICMPD Turkey offices on full-time and freelance basis on various subjects including human rights considerations regarding assisted voluntary return, forced return and alternatives to immigration detention as well as within legislative processes on migration and asylum. She obtained her L.L.M. degree on Public International Law from University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law in 2007.
Her current research focuses on externalization of migration control, safe third country practices in EU-Turkey and Canada-USA contexts, attribution of international responsibility in the context of asylum cooperation and legality of withdrawal from international human rights treaties. Her previous postdoctoral research at University of Gothenburg under ASILE Project focused on EU-third country asylum cooperation arrangements, attribution of international responsibility in this context and the right to choose country of asylum.
Email: gamze.ovacik@mcgill.ca
Tiffany Pollock
Postdoctoral Researcher, Children, Childhood and Youth Program, York University
Tiffany’s postdoctoral project examines how the (re)embodiment of musical heritages by children and youth who have undergone forced displacement is a way through which they maintain connections to their communities of origin and generate feelings of belonging in new contexts.
Research Interests: music, dance and migration; child and youth musical cultures; transnational mobilities, forced displacement of children and youth, music as a tool of community-building, belonging and resistance; transnational gender and sexuality studies.
Email: tiffanyraepollock@gmail.com
Morgan Poteet
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Mount Allison University
Research interests: Lived experiences of migrant racialized populations in Canada: immigration, forced migration, refugees, racialization, youth criminalization, citizenship and identity, globalization and transnationalism.
Email: mpoteet@mta.ca
Niloufar Pourzand
Researcher
Niloufar has worked for the UN, largely UNICEF, for 34 years in various capacities in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Eastern Caribbean, Indonesia and India. She has a PhD in Sociology, Gender and Ethnic Studies, from the University of Greenwich in the UK with a focus on the agency of educated Afghan refugee women in Pakistan. She has published a number of academic articles and lead many UNICEF research initiatives, programme planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation exercises, as well as worked closely with governments, academia, civil society, think tanks, other UN agencies and the media to advocate for laws, policies, programmes and budgets supportive of children and women’s rights. Niloufar has also held various senior management positions with UNICEF, which provided her with the platform to be a strong advocate on various human rights and social justice issues. Niloufar is originally from Iran and immigrated to Canada in the year 2000 with her family.
Email: nilypourzand@gmail.com
Anna Purkey
Assistant Professor, Human Rights, St. Paul’s University College, at the University of Waterloo
Research interests: International refugee and human rights law and policy, protracted refugee situations, access to justice and legal empowerment, human capabilities approach, human dignity, migration governance, and Canadian refugee protection law and policy.
Email: apurkey@uwaterloo.ca
Ajnesh Prasad
Canada Research Chair, School of Business, Royal Roads University
Research interests: Economic inequality, embodiment, refugees, Palestine
Email: ajnesh_prasad@yahoo.ca
Zeeshan Qadar
Project Manager, National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba
Mr. S.M. Zeeshan Qadar is a Project Manager with the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba. In this capacity, he is managing various projects especially focusing on vulnerable populations such as internally displaced persons and refugees. Mr. Zeeshan Qadar has developed various knowledge translation products tailoring to needs of public health professionals in Canada. This include webinars, podcasts, case study, evidence report and others on public health.
Previously, Mr. Qadar has worked as a Researcher on Systematic Reviews with George and Fee Yay Centre for Health Care Innovation. In addition, he has a decade of experience in public health and evidence base medicine. He has worked in various capacities at Centre for Rural Health & Social Services Development, Carbondale, USA and Schneider Institute for Health Policy, Brandeis University, Waltham, USA. Mr. Qadar holds a Bachelors of Pharmacy and a Master of Science in International Health Policy and Management degrees (Brandeis University).
Email: Sheikh.qadar@umanitoba.ca
Fahim Quadir
Vice Provost and Dean, School of Graduate Studies, Queen’s University
Research interests: Aid effectiveness, Southern donors, good governance, civil society, migration and development, micro-finance, trans-border social movements for peace, human security, and human development
Email: quadirf@queensu.ca
Mariam Rashid
Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Studies Program at Vassar College
Mariam is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Studies Program at Vassar College. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on global refugee resettlement policies and practices, the coloniality of displacement, and issues related to statelessness, nativity, and indigeneity within minority peoples of East Africa. Her work also critically engages with the discourse of diversity and inclusivity within higher education institutions and racial formations inherent in the International Education and Development field. Her current research projects draw on black studies, black feminist thought, and anticolonial scholarship to explore recurring racialized, gendered, and colonial formations reproduced in refugee resettlement policies and practices in the US and selected regions globally. Mariam's intellectual work is animated by the quotidian knowledge-making praxis of the African diaspora. Mariam received her doctoral degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Email: mrashid@vassar.edu
Diane Riskdahl
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Scarborough
Diane Riskedahl is a linguistic anthropologist who works on the intersection of language and identity. She is currently pursing an ethnographic project that focuses on issues of cross-cultural communication faced by Syrian newcomers in Ontario and their sponsorship group members. Her previous work has focused on political discourse in Lebanon analyzing both state and civil society rhetoric in the context of political advertising and protest movements, with attention to political uses of historical memory, kinship metaphors and interactions of orality and literacy.
Email: diane.riskedahl@utoronto.ca
Althea-Maria Rivas
Lecturer, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London
Research interests: The politics of global development and violence, everyday violence in post-conflict settings, black and indigenous feminisms, gender (in)security and development, race, racism and development, youth and migration, humanitarian intervention and post-conflict reconstruction, sexual and gender based violence, emotion and war, feminist and postcolonial theory and pedagogy, postcolonial conversations on resistance and development. Regional interests: Central Asia, West and East Africa.
Email: ar66@soas.ac.uk
Justin Rogers
Lecturer, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies, The Open University
My research interests are in the area of child welfare and child protection. These interests stem from my experiences working as a social worker in local authority family placement teams. I have a particular interest in the ways that children and young people in public care, are looked after by the state.
I have recently undertaken a participatory research project with a group of unaccompanied asylum seeking young people living in foster care in the UK. This research drew on the sociology of childhood, to capture the lived experiences of refugee children and young people. I am also currently developing research proposals in order to explore European policy and practice responses, to the care of unaccompanied refugee children and young people.
Email: justin.rogers@open.ac.uk
Cheran Rudharmoorthy
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor
Research interests: Ethnicity, Migration, Racialization, Identity, International Development
Email: cheran@uwindsor.ca
Albert Scherr
Director, Institute of Sociology, University of Education, Freiburg
Dr. Albert Scherr is head of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Education in Freiburg (Germany), member of the German Council for Migration and editorial board member of the German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies. In his research he has dealt with theoretical foundations of a sociology of flight as well as conducted qualitative empirical studies on the situation of refugees with a precarious residential status and unaccompanied minor refugees. He has expertise in critical social theories as well as qualitative social research, and is involved in the discussion about the possibilities and limits of social work and civic engagement. He has published widely on the sociology of migration and flight, both in books, in peer-reviewed journals as well as in journals practitioners in social work and for those engaged in social movements.
Email: scherr@ph-freiburg.de
Fidaa Shehada
Professor, International Development Program and School of Advancement, Humanities and Social Sciences, Centennial College
Shehada completed her PhD as a Fulbright scholar in Public Affairs and Administration with a focus on international development and her master’s degree in Human Rights. She taught at Binghamton University, Rutgers University, and Humber College. Currently she teaches at Centennial College. Her research interests include: human rights approach to development, women in conflict zones, and the academic and economic integration of refugees in Canada.
Abubakar Abdi Shariif
Community Scholar
Abukar Shariif has currently repatriated to Baidoa (Somalia) after many years in Dadaab (Ifo),
and is working as the local Edu-care project coordinator with SOS Childrens Village. In this
position he works at close contact with people who are internally displaced and is responsible for
providing coordination and leadership in planning the development and expansion of the project.
He holds a Masters in Education from York University-Canada, a Bachelor Degree in Education
Arts from Kenyatta University, as well as a Diploma in Early Childhood Education. He also has
over twelve years of professional experience in social development, education, and protection.
As part of the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project, he has worked as a
research assistant and program mentor (PM) for undergraduate students. Throughout these
experiences he has witnessed firsthand how deep-rooted cultural practices may compound with
limited access to education to marginalize and push-out girls from schools. He is fluent in multiple
languages - including Somali, English, Kiswahili, and Arabic- and is drawn to spaces that promote
interculturalism.
Kathy Sherrell
Associate Director, ISSofBC
Kathy Sherrell has worked at ISSofBC in settlement services for nine years. She takes a lead role in program development and evaluation, contract negotiations and oversight, and quality assurance and standardization. Involvement in special projects such as the Refugee Readiness Hub and the GAR Refugee Trauma Pilot allows Kathy to share her passion for refugees with others, promoting policy change and greater understanding of refugee issues.
Kathy holds a PhD in Geography from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Arts Degree from Simon Fraser University with an emphasis on refugee resettlement in Canada, including regionalization, legal status, housing, and settlement experiences. Kathy continues to be actively engaged in research with refugees. At present Kathy is a co-investigator on two pan-Canadian, multi-year refugee research projects, as well as a lead on numerous internal research projects.
Email: kathy.sherrell@issbc.org
Richa Shivakoti
Researcher
Richa is a researcher with a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore and a dual Masters in Public Affairs and Political Science from Indiana University. Her research interests include the different facets of the migration-development nexus including labour migration, remittance, forced migration, gender, diaspora and migration governance.
Email: rshivakoti@gmail.com
Stephanie Silverman
Lecturer, Trinity College in the University of Toronto
Dr. Silverman researches migrant detention, bail programs, and abolitionism from a community-based, sociolegal and ethical perspective. She also has interests in Canadian and international legal and policy frameworks concerning sanctuary jurisdictions, child migrants, citizenship allocations, and preventive incarceration regimes.
Ray Silvius
Associate Director, Department of Political Science, University of Winnipeg
Ray Silvius is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Winnipeg. His research interests include Global Political Economy, non-Western political economies, community-based research, and the Political Economy of refugees, home, and migration. He is conducting Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded research through the Manitoba Research Alliance into the housing situations of refugees that have resettled in Winnipeg. He is lead in the Migration in Remote and Rural Areas network within the Rural Policy Learning Commons, a 7 year, SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant.
Email: r.silvius@uwinnipeg.ca
Craig Damian Smith
Senior Research Associate, Global Migration Lab, CERC in Migration and Integration, Ryerson University
Research interests: Migration, displacement, European foreign policy, and refugee integration.
Email: csmith@pairity.ca
Lúcio Sousa
Associate Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Management, Universidade Aberta (Lisboa)
Research interests: Refugee policies and integration policies in Portugal, forced migration in colonial and post-colonial contexts in Portuguese speaking countries, forced migration and nation building in Southeast Asia and particularly Timor Leste.
Email: lucio.sousa@uab.pt
Read More:
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8619-8673
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lucio_Sousa
Academia.edu: https://uab-pt.academia.edu/LúcioSousa
Dina Taha
Assistant Professor, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Dina Taha recently competed her PhD in the Department of Sociology at York University. Her research interests include Critical Forced Migration and Refugee discourses, Postcolonial Feminism, Gender in the Middle East, Victimhood and victimization, Refugee agency and survival strategies. Her dissertation explores Female Syrian Refugees survival mechanisms in Egypt.
Mukete Tahle Itoe
Justice, High court Judge of Mezam, Bamenda: Human Rights Division, Cameroon
Justice Mukete Tahle Itoe is a practicing Judge in Cameroon with over 20 years’ experience and a human rights activist. He is a holder of a PhD in International law from Selinus University in Italy, specializing in the rights of pretrial detainees. Justice Mukete has also attended many certification courses at the UN Human Rights Centre in Geneva, Switzerland; the International Institute of Human Rights (IIHR) in Strasbourg, France; the Institute of Social Studies(ISS) at The Hague, The Netherlands; the International Development Law Organization(IDLO) in Rome, Italy, the International Centre for Human Rights Education(EQUITAS) in Montreal, Canada, the Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), and the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) in Sanremo, Italy, amongst others.
He has written many articles and position papers on the rule of law, anti-corruption, human rights, democracy and governance. He is a member of many international organizations amongst which are the UN Judicial Integrity Network, the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges (IARMJ), the World Jurist Association (WJA),the International Bar Association (IBA), Penal Reform International (PRI), Amnesty International (AI), the International Correction and Prisons Association (ICPA), and the International Transformation Network (TTN), Germany. He is an Associate of the Council of a Community of Democracies (CCD), USA. Justice Mukete coordinates the activities of the Refugee Welfare Association of Cameroon (REWAC), website: www.rewac.org a humanitarian organization that promotes, protects and enforces the rights of vulnerable migrants as enshrined in international law.
Email: tmukete@yahoo.com
Abdel Aziz Thabet
Professor Emeritus, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry – School of Public Health – Al Quds University- Jerusalem
Research interests: Community mental health especially with traumatized refugee children, adolescents, and families.
Email: abdelazizt@hotmail.com
Sule Tomkinson
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Université Laval
Research interests: A theoretical focus on migration management, human rights adjudication, front-line workers, and discretion with a regional focus on North America. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, her research interests are at the intersection of public administration, political science, and migration studies– making connections between different disciplines with the aim of producing research that is both theoretically engaged and policy relevant. Her scholarship takes law as a social force, among others, that shape and constrain migration decision-making.
Email: Sule.Tomkinson@pol.ulaval.ca
Rine Vieth
Independent Scholar
Dr. Rine Vieth (they/iel) is trained as a legal anthropologist and socio-legal researcher, and is interested in the intersections of law, religion, and governance, particularly in the context of migration. They are passionate about engaged, multidisciplinary research that can lead to policy and practice changes.
Research interests: administrative law; asylum determination and claims of religious persecution; bureaucracy; documents as an object of study; evidence and asylum-seekers; knowledge infrastructures in asylum determinations; local human rights mobilizations; migration deterrence policies; migration governance; narrative and asylum-seeking; religion and migration; technological tools for better understanding migration and law; tribunals for asylum and immigration adjudication
Area interests: Canada; Europe (EU, France, UK); US
Read more: link to https://www.rinevieth.com
Luna Vives
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Université de Montréal
Luna Vives is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Université de Montréal. A political geographer by training, she is interested in the use of public policy to discriminate against marginalized populations, and in particular against racialized groups. Much of her research has focused on the development of the European Union’s southern border. More specifically, she has analyzed the geopolitical and gender implications of the border implemented to stop migration from Western Africa to Spain, the impact of restrictive immigration policies on the parenting strategies of migrant mothers, and the role of migrants and smugglers in shaping EU border policy. Currently, Luna is developing a more comprehensive analysis of the Mediterranean border that compares management measures along the western, central, and eastern migration routes. This will be the foundation for a future project on the impact these measures have had, and continue to have, on the migration of unaccompanied migrant children.
Luna is member of the editorial board at ACME: an international journal for critical geographies. Her work has been published in Political Geography, The European Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Migration Studies. She is also the co-founder of the Migration Research Collective / Collectif de recherche sur les migrations.
Email: luna.vives@umontreal.ca
Yolanda Weima
Research Fellow, Alma Mater Studiorum—University of Bologna
Yolanda is a feminist political geographer specialized in forced migration studies. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC Advanced Grant “TheGame: Counter-mapping informal refugee mobilities along the Balkan Route”—a project spanning from Greece to Italy, through Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Croatia. Within the project she focuses on the archipelago of formal camps (transit centres, reception centres, etc.), examining and theorizing their spatialities, temporalities, the power relations that produce them and that they produce, and their relation to informal mobilities, as well as everyday life in such camps. Yolanda received her PhD in Geography from York University in 2022. Her graduate research examined the recurring displacement of Burundian refugees which has extended over more than five decades. She analyses the interrelated dynamics of enduring displacement, encampment, return, violence, and camp closures.
Email: y.weima@unibo.it
Stacy Wilson-Forsberg
Associate Professor, Human Rights Human Diversity Program, Wilfrid Laurier University
Stacey’s research broadly focuses on Immigration and multiculturalism. She is especially interested in the experiences of refugee youth in schools and smaller communities, the experiences of asylum seekers in Canada and Mexico, and the development of intercultural competence in university students. Her ongoing research includes a qualitative study of the challenges and opportunities faced by African refugee youth when attempting to access postsecondary education in six Canadian provinces, and a study of Central American asylum seekers waiting in temporary shelters in Mexico. Recent publications include a textbook published by Oxford University Press called Immigrant Youth in Canada: Theoretical Approaches, Practical Issues, and Professional Perspectives. She has published in several peer reviewed journals including: Race, Ethnicity and Education, Journal of International Migration and Integration, and Canadian Ethnic Studies and is a regular contributor of opinion pieces and short articles to newspapers. Stacey is fluent in English and Spanish. In 2018 she was awarded the Donald F. Morgenson Award for Teaching Excellence in Internationalization.
Expertise: Refugee youth, transition to postsecondary education of immigrant and refugee youth, asylum seekers, Mexico’s refugee determination process, arts-based inquiry, strengthening intercultural competence in university students.
Email: swilsonforsberg@wlu.ca
Julie E. E. Young
Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge
Dr. Julie E. E. Young is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies and Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She holds a doctorate in Geography and a Graduate Diploma in Refugee and Migration Studies from York University. Her research program aims to better understand North America’s borders in the context of broader global processes as well as what local practices tell us about where, how, and for whom borders work. Her research interests are broadly in the areas of political geography, critical border studies, refugee and migration policies and practices, and North and Central America. Julie’s work has been published in ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, and Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees.
Email: julie.young@uleth.ca
Meron Zeleke
Adjunct Associate Professor, Addis Ababa University
Meron Zeleke is Adjunct Associate Professor at Addis Ababa University. She has years of international teaching and research experience at renowned academic institutions in Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia, and is a member of several international academic associations and an editorial board member of internationally renowned journals published by Michigan State University and Brill. She has extensively published books, edited volumes and journal articles published with internationally renowned publishers. Her core areas of expertise are in the areas of gender and migration, child migration, gender based violence, social inequality, and conflict.
Email: jeressokiyya@gmail.com