Speakers
Laure Assaf is Assistant Professor, Arab Crossroads Studies and Anthropology, New York University Abu Dhabi. She was trained in anthropology at Paris-Nanterre University, where she received her MA and PhD, and in Arabic language at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations. Her research focuses on youth, urbanity and social change in the United Arab Emirates and the broader Gulf region.
Martina Boese is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, La Trobe University. She has researched and written about regional migration and settlement in Australia, the employment experiences of temporary migrants and refugees, racialization in employment, and migration and multiculturalism policies. Her publications include Becoming Australian (Melbourne University Publishing, 2014), the edited collection Critical Reflections on Migration, “Race” and Multiculturalism (Routledge, 2017) and articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Sociology. Her current research explores the governance of migrant employment in regional Australia and understandings of migrants’ deservingness.
Estella Carpi is Research Associate, Migration Research Unit, Department of Geography, University College London (UCL) and an Adjunct Lecturer, Humanitarian Studies, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. Between 2016 and 2017, she was a Research Associate in the Development Planning Unit at UCL and Humanitarian Affairs Advisor at Save the Children U.K., working on the urban-humanitarian nexus. She received her PhD in social anthropology from the University of Sydney, with a project on the social response to humanitarian assistance provision in Lebanon. After studying Arabic in Milan and Damascus (2002–2008), she worked as a researcher for several institutions in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in international academic journals such as the Journal of Refugee Studies and Third World Quarterly. As a multilingual researcher, she has published in French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic.
Jonathan Darling is Associate Professor in Human Geography. His research focuses on the spatial politics of asylum, sanctuary and solidarity movements, and the urban dynamics of forced migration. He has co-edited three books: Encountering the City (Routledge, 2016), Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles (University of Manchester Press, 2019) and Research Ethics for Human Geography (Sage, 2020). His new book, Systems of Suffering: Governing Refugee Lives (Pluto Press, forthcoming in spring 2022), explores the U.K.’s system of housing and support for asylum seekers and refugees.
Melissa Kelly is Research Fellow, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University. She was a Research Associate at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research in Uppsala University and a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Borders in Globalization project at Carleton University. She holds a PhD in social and economic geography from Uppsala University in Sweden. Her research interests include comparative immigration policy, the social and economic integration of immigrants, and immigration to rural and remote areas. She is currently looking at the factors influencing immigrant retention in small and medium-sized cities in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
Loren B. Landau is Professor of Migration and Development, University of Oxford, and Research Professor with the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand. Together with Jean Pierre Misago, he co-founded and co-directs the Mobility Governance Lab. His interdisciplinary scholarship explores mobility, multiscale governance and the transformation of socio-political community across the Global South. His publications include I Want to Go Home Forever: Stories of Becoming and Belonging in South Africa’s Great Metropolis (Wits Press, 2018); Forging African Communities: Mobility, Integration, and Belonging (Palgrave, 2017); Exorcising the Demons Within: Xenophobia, Violence and Statecraft in Contemporary South Africa (UN University Press/Wits Press, 2012); Contemporary Migration to South Africa (World Bank, 2011); and The Humanitarian Hangover: Displacement, Aid, and Transformation in Western Tanzania (Wits Press, 2008).
Peggy Levitt is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology at Wellesley College, and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. She is a Co-Founder of the Global (De)Centre. Peggy was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Helsinki (2017) and Maastricht University (2014), and has received major grants from the National Science, Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations. She was recently a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute (2017–2019) and a Distinguished Visitor at the Baptist University of Hong Kong (2019–2021). Her most recent books include Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (University of California Press, 2015) and Transnational Social Protection: Transforming Social Welfare in a World on the Move (Routledge, forthcoming in 2022).
Cathy Yang Liu is Professor and Chair in the Department of Public Management and Policy at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, where she directs and teaches in the Planning and Economic Development Concentration. She conducts research and publishes widely in the areas of community and economic development, urban labour markets and inequality, and migration and entrepreneurship, as well as international urban development. Her edited book Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities: Global Perspectives was published by Springer in 2021. Cathy currently serves as a Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Urban Affairs, an Associate Editor for Economic Development Quarterly and an Associate Editor for Regional Studies, Regional Science. She received her PhD in urban planning from the University of Southern California and her Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
Cesar E. Merlín-Escorza studied social anthropology at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa after having lived three years as a migrant worker in the U.S. and Canada. He completed an MA in anthropology and development studies at Radboud University. There, he was given the opportunity to continue with a PhD project, working jointly in the Department of Geography and the Department of Anthropology, to study the practices of non-governmental sheltering organizations and anti-racist collectives in México and the Netherlands.
Franck Mermier is an Anthropologist and Senior Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and a member of the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux. He supervises doctoral theses in anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he also co-organized seminars such as Frontiers and Movements of the City and Mediterranean Urban Societies. He was the Director of the French Centre for Yemeni Studies in Sana’a (1991–1997) and of the Department of Contemporary Studies at the French Institute of the Near East (2005–2009). He also conducted research in Istanbul, where he was affiliated with the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (2019–2021). His research focuses on Yemeni society, urban societies and cultural production in the Arab world. He has directed several Arab-French translation projects in the social sciences.
Amin Moghadam is Senior Research Associate, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD in human geography and urban studies from the Lumière Lyon 2 University. His research and publications have focused on migration policy and practices, diaspora studies, and circulation and regional integration in the Middle East, with a focus on the Persian Gulf region (Iran and the United Arab Emirates). Amin acted as Associate Research Scholar at the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University between 2016 and 2020. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, Aix-Marseille University, and at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. Amin’s current research explores ways in which the dynamics of space production in global cities intersect with the politics of housing and homemaking and the role both forces play in migration trajectories, transnational practices, and class formation in the host society.
Jérémie Molho is Marie Curie Fellow, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute. From 2019 to 2021, he was a member of the Asian Urbanism Cluster at the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. He has a PhD in geography from the University of Angers. His research interests include the effects of cultural globalization on cities, urban cultural policies and the governance of diversity. Since 2017, his research has focused on the governance of diversity in Doha and Singapore.
Yolande Pottie-Sherman is Associate Professor of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and an urban geographer specializing in migration. She is the author of numerous academic articles on migration, socio-cultural diversity and community change, and Co-Editor of Resettlement: Uprooting and Rebuilding Communities in Newfoundland and Labrador and Beyond. At Memorial, she co-leads the Adaptive Cities and Engagement Space, a research collective promoting social justice in smaller cities. Yolande is currently the Principal Investigator of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Insight Grant project New Home North, which examines the housing experiences of international migrants in northern Canadian cities. She is also Co-Investigator on the Ocean Frontier Institute-funded project Future Ocean and Coastal Infrastructures: Designing Safe, Sustainable and Inclusive Coastal Communities and Industries for Atlantic Canada. Through this project, her team is conducting research on housing, international migration and COVID-19 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Zeynep Sahin-Mencutek is Senior Researcher, Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, where she leads a comparative project on return and reintegration. She is also Research Affiliate with CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University, conducting joint research on transnational governance of migration. She held the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (June 2020–May 2021) and an international fellowship at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg (2019–2020). She also served as Senior Researcher for the Horizon 2020 project RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond. Previously, she served as an Assistant Professor in Turkey, and in 2018 achieved the rank of Docent in the field of international relations. Her research examines the governance of migration, return migration, diaspora politics and Middle Eastern politics. Along with her monograph Refugee Governance, State and Politics in the Middle East (Routledge, 2018), she has published dozens of articles in internationally refereed journals, chapters in international collected volumes, encyclopedia entries, book reviews and policy reports. She received her PhD in politics and international relations from the University of Southern California in 2011.
Peter Scholten is Professor with a Chair in the Governance of Migration and Diversity, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also Academic Coordinator of the IMISCOE Research Network, Alliance Coordinator of the European University of Post-Industrial Cities and Director of the LDE Centre on the Governance of Migration and Diversity. His work, which focuses on science-politics relations, multi-level governance and urban governance of migration and diversity, has been published in numerous international journals, and he recently published his monograph Mainstreaming Versus Alienation: A Complexity Approach to the Governance of Migration and Diversity (Palgrave, 2020). Peter is also Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Comparative Migration Studies and Associated Editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.
Jie Shen is Associate Professor, School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University. She received her PhD in city and regional planning at Cardiff University and worked as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Geography, University College London. Her research focuses on urban and regional development in China, including suburbanization and suburban development, mega urban projects and socio-spatial differentiation. She has published papers in high-impact journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning A, Urban Geography, Regional Studies, Cities and Land Use Policy. She currently serves as an Editor of Regional Studies and Corresponding Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Sheryl-Ann Simpson is Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University. Her research spans the areas of immigration, citizenship and environmental justice, with an additional interest in spatial methods. She has published on the relationship between land and citizenship based on research conducted in the Canadian Prairies, the eastern U.S., California and the Nordic region. She co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research titled “Planning Beyond Mass Incarceration,” which addressed the relationship between planning and policing through a lens of racial justice.
Talia Stump is Associate Director of Settlement, Multicultural New South Wales, where she oversees the coordination of migrant and refugee settlement policy on behalf of the Government of New South Wales. Talia is driven to better understand and find solutions to complex social problems, affecting change through collaboration. She has worked with refugee communities for 15 years through roles in settlement organizations, public policy and research. Talia holds a Master of Development Studies (refugees and displacement) from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Social Work from Flinders University. In 2019, she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and travelled to Canada, the U.S., Germany, Norway and Sweden to research strategies to support the attraction and retention of refugees in rural towns. Her findings were published in the report The Right Fit: Attracting and Retaining Newcomers in Regional Towns.
Carlos Teixeira is Professor, Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies, University of British Columbia. His current research focuses on the changing social geography of Canadian cities; ethnic entrepreneurship through comparative case studies of immigrants in Toronto and Vancouver; and the housing experiences and coping strategies of new immigrants and refugees in suburban Toronto and Vancouver. He has published in journals such as Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Environment and Planning C, The Canadian Geographer, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, and Housing Studies, and has co-edited three books: The Housing and Economic Experiences of Immigrants in U.S. and Canadian Cities (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Immigrant Geographies of North American Cities (Oxford University Press, 2012), and The Portuguese in Canada: Diasporic Challenges and Adjustment, 2nd ed. (University of Toronto Press, 2009). He was also the Housing and Neighbourhoods Domain Leader for Metropolis British Columbia and the Priority Leader (National Coordinator) for the Housing and Neighbourhoods Research Domain of the Metropolis Project, a federally funded, Canada-wide consortium of academics, government partners and community organizations.
Zhixi Zhuang is a Registered Professional Planner and Associate Professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on ethnocultural diversity, migration and cities, and ethnic entrepreneurship and placemaking. Specifically, she explores the lived experiences of immigrant and racialized communities, their strategies for cultural recognition, and their negotiations for social, economic and political inclusion. Her research addresses the impacts of global migration on municipal policy and governance, and sheds light on equity-based approaches to planning with diversity.