Research Team

Dr. Harald Bauder is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. Dr. Bauder is also the founding Director (2011-2015) of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement (RCIS). He received a PhD in Geography in 1998 from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and MA and BA degrees in Geography and Urban Studies from Wayne State University, Detroit, USA. In 2016, Dr. Bauder received the Sarwan Sahota Distinguished Scholar Award, 2016, which is Ryerson University’s highest annual research award, and in 2015, he received the Konrad Adenauer Research Award, recognizing his life-time contribution to the academic and cultural exchange between the Federal Republic of Germany and Canada. He has published several books, dozens of popular and academic articles on issues of immigration.

Bridget Collrin is a PhD student in the immigration, settlement, and diaspora stream of the Policy Studies program at Toronto Metropolitan University. She holds a dual Master of Arts in Political Science from Carleton University, Ottawa and the University of Lucerne, Switzerland where she developed a research interest in immigration and integration policies in both respective countries. Her past research has examined topics on the construction of discourse on immigration in multilingual democracies, and on the comparative study of integration policies at the municipal level. Bridget’s professional experience working with local resettlement organizations has also greatly shaped her current research interest in exploring how migrant solidarity and hospitality practices are helping to support newcomers in urban centers across Canada and abroad.

Dr. Lujan is a social scientist and an educator who specializes in immigration research and community development. As an experienced researcher, Dr. Lujan has participated in numerous research projects and teaches undergraduate courses in social research.  Dr. Lujan has a multidisciplinary academic background and holds a PhD in Policy Studies from Ryerson University, an M.A. in History from Queen’s University, a B.Ed. from the University of Ottawa, and a B.A. in History from the University of Toronto. Dr. Lujan is an assistant professor at Department of Child and Youth  Sudies at Trent University.

Nick Dreher (he/him) is a PhD student in the migration, settlement and diaspora stream of the Policy Studies program and a recipient of the CERC doctoral fellowship in Migration and Integration. Nick’s research interests focus on social inclusion and belonging among forced migrants and refugees in multicultural urban settings.  He has worked in non-profit settings in a variety of roles supporting migrants and refugees in South Africa, Uganda and several cities in the United States. He holds a B.A. in International Studies from American University and an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon.

Dr. Khangelani Moyo is a Social Science and Urban Studies Research Specialist with academic training in Sociology, Urban Studies, Anthropology and Migration Studies. He has over 10 years’ experience in conducting research and training and has published scholarly work in peer reviewed international journal publications in the fields of urban studies, migration, and refugee studies. His research interests include Migration Management, Refugee Governance, Migrant Transnationalism and Refugee Integration in the Global South and Global North Contexts

He is a visiting fellow (September – December 2021) at the University of Freiburg’s Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT) where he is doing research focusing on refugee integration in the city of Freiburg, Germany.

Dr. Elias Steinhilper is a political sociologist with a particular interest in migration, political conflict, civil society, and social movements. He obtained a PhD in political science and sociology from Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) in Berlin. His work has been published in the journals Sociology, Social Movement Studies, International Migration, Social Inclusion and in the monograph “Migrant Protest: Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations” (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).

Dr. Janina Stürner-Siovitz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where she has completed her PhD in Political Science. Interested in migration governance in Africa, Europe and at the global level, she explores urban migration governance in African intermediary cities in cooperation with research partners from Africa and Europe. She has also conducted research on multi-stakeholder interactions and city diplomacy in the development of the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees as well as in EU policy-making. As a policy-oriented researcher she has developed studies, workshops and policy papers on behalf of organizations such as the European Commission, the German Federal Foreign Office, the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project (MC2CM) and various foundations. She is a peer reviewer for the Knowledge Platform of the UN Network on Migration and a Visiting Fellow of the German Marshall Fund.

Tyler Correia is a PhD Candidate at York University Canada’s Social and Political Thought Program (SPTH). Through his work, Tyler explores urban migrant-rights activisms (focusing on sanctuary cities, solidarity and No Borders politics) in their capacity to reconceptualize global institutional frameworks based on principles of hospitality. Likewise, his work is motivated by explorations of the writings of Jacques Derrida and his interlocutors—particularly his organizing around critical education and cities of refuge. Tyler is completing a dissertation on urban migration politics in response to the globalization of the nation-state. He is also pursuing a graduate diploma at York’s Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS).

Afag Javadova is a PhD candidate in Policy Studies program, Immigration, Settlement and Diaspora Policies stream at TMU. Her background spans a diverse range of disciplines, including migration, human rights, sociology, and languages. She received her MA degree in Global Citizenship, Identities and Human Rights from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, and MA and BA degrees in English from Azerbaijan University of Languages. Her current research work is focused on political incorporation of immigrants and urban citizenship. Prior to starting her doctorate, Afag served as a policy advisor for the U.S. Department of State. More recently, she has worked as a Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant for Ryerson University and an Integration Program Officer for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Janika Kuge (she/her) is currently working on her PhD project in Political Geography at the University of Freiburg, Germany. This project focuses on conflicts on citizenship and belonging through the example of Sanctuary Cities in the US. She is particularly interested in the nexus of state, citizenship and migration, in geographies of justice and the complex notion of culture and difference. Bringing forward a critical understanding of geographical knowledge in these categories is the driver of her scholarly but also her activist engagement in the international movement of solidarity cities. Her background is interdisciplinary as she holds a state degree in geography, German language studies and philosophy.

Gülce Safak Özdemir is a PhD Candidate at the Political and Social Sciences Department, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). Her dissertation highlights local policies and civil society practices towards irregular/undocumented migrants in 13 European cities. She has a strong interest in comparative politics. Previously, she worked as a Research Assistant for the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on Migration to conduct comparative analysis for Mediterranean cities in terms of migration. Currently, she is a consultant at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research for the project ‘Addressing group-based inequalities’ to support the project team in building a database of affirmative action policies worldwide. She is also a Teaching Assistant of “Comparative Politics and Democratization” in the Master's in International Relations Program of the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals. 

Simon Sperling is a Research Associate at the Chair of "Migration and Society" at the University of Osnabrück and a member of the Institute for “Migration Research and Intercultural Studies” (IMIS). In his PhD project he analyzes how different forms of social prognosis affect migration politics, focusing especially on the German legal concept ‘Bleibeperspektive’. Simon has studied Political Science at the Bavarian School of Public Policy (Dipl. sc. pol. Univ.) and Social Work (BA) at the KSFH University of Applied Science in Munich. He studied as a doctoral candidate in the PhD program “Boundary Formations in Migration Societies” and was an associated member at the graduate program “The Production of Migration” (Osnabrück). He is also part of the “Network for critical migration and border regime research” (kritnet).

Dr. Benjamin Bruce holds a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from Sciences Po Paris and is Conacyt Research Fellow at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef) in Monterrey, Mexico. His primary research interests are migration, diasporas, foreign policy, and transnational religious movements. He is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers and author of Governing Islam Abroad: Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in Western Europe (Palgrave, 2019), and is currently Primary Investigator for the Conacyt-SEP Project “Sanctuary Cities as Emerging Borders: Transnational Dynamics and Lived Spaces of Undocumented Mexicans in the United States.”

Rasha Arous works closely on issues of urban displacement and development. She had conducted extensive research on Cairo as a place of Refuge. She rolled out an urban development strategy for UNHCR and managed a portfolio on Urban development in refugee hosting areas that yielded an array of participative and community-based projects. Through that, she tested closely questions of housing, urban form and governance with refugees’ everyday life and experiences. She also worked on network analysis and approaches to community empowerment for the diverse refugee communities in Egypt. Her current doctoral research is concerned with the link between culture and heritage specifically with people’s connection to the cities’ they move to and how they develop feelings of belonging.

Dr. Francis L. Collins is Professor of Sociology at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. His recent research addresses the regulation and experiences of temporary migration, racism and workplace exploitation. He is author of Global Asian City (Wiley 2018) and co-editor of Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification (Palgrave 2020), Aspiration, Desire and the Drivers of Migration (Routledge 2020) and Handbook of Transnationalism (Edward Elgar 2022). Francis is currently involved in two multidisciplinary research programmes focused on Working to End Racial Oppression (based in Aotearoa New Zealand) and Liberating Migrant Labour (involving researchers in Australia, Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dr. Stefan Rother is a senior researcher at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute for socio-cultural research, University of Freiburg, Germany. From 2021 to 2023 he acts as Professor pro tempore for migration, flight and social mobility at the Bundeswehr University Munich. His research focus is on international migration, global governance, social movements, regional integration and migrant self-organizing in “global cities” such as Hong Kong. 

He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Southeast Asia as well as participant observation at global governance fora and civil society parallel and counter-events at the UN, ILO, ASEAN and WTO-level as well as the GFMD and its Mayors Mechanism.

Dr. Laura Madokoro is a historian and Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University. Her work focuses on the history of migration, refuge, and race. She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2016). Her current research focuses on the history of sanctuary in urban contexts, and the relationship between sanctuary and settler colonialism. She is co-director of the journal Histoire Sociale / Social History, a member of the editorial collective at https://activehistory.ca (external link) 

Dr. Raffaele Bazurli is a researcher and teaching associate at the School of Politics and International Relations of Queen Mary, University of London. He has been recently awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by UK Research and Innovation, for the project Sanctuary Policies for Irregular Migrants in European Cities (SPIMEC). His research focuses on urban governance and politics, immigrant welfare and asylum, and social movements. More information at: https://raffaelebazurli.com/ (external link) 

Dr. Ammar A. Malik is Senior Research Scientist at AidData, where he leads the Chinese Development Finance Program. His team develops pioneering methods, such as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology, to track and analyze underreported financial flows from non-traditional donors to developing countries.Prior to joining AidData, Dr. Malik was Director of Research at Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), a research initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, where he led research-policy collaborations in the Middle East region by deploying evidence-based insights and training to improve public policies and leadership. Dr. Malik obtained his PhD in Public Policy from George Mason University, MA in Public Affairs from Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) Paris, MA in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and BSc in Economics and Mathematics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Detroit School of Urban Studies. Her areas of research are refugee resettlement, grassroots organizations, participatory practice, state-civil society relations and critical policy studies.

Oliver Bakewell is a Reader in Migration Studies at the Global Development Institute (GDI), University of Manchester. His work focuses on the intersections between migration and mobility and processes of development and change, with an empirical focus on migration within Africa. He is currently working on range of projects including the Research and Evidence Facility (external link)  of the EU Trust Fund for Africa (Horn of Africa); Effects of Externalisation (external link) : EU Migration Management in Africa and the Middle East (EFFEXT); and, the Global Challenge Research Hub on South-South Migration and Inequality, co-leading the Poverty and Income Inequalities (external link)  work package.  

Prior to joining GDI, he spent over a decade at the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. He was one of the founder members of the International Migration Institute and became Co-Director and then Director. Before taking up this role at Oxford, Oliver spent many years working with migrants and refugees both as a researcher and a practitioner with a range of development and humanitarian NGOs.

Juan Carlos Triviño is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Juan de la Cierva research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University–Barcelona (UPF). I hold a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from UPF (Cum Laude). Juan Carlos’ field of expertise is primarily focused on governance processes from multilevel and regulatory perspectives in multiple policy sectors but with a special focus on immigration and integration. Juan Carlos studies the urban governance of immigration and integration and the regulatory governance of policy sectors such as immigration, food safety, health, and finance. His work has been published in Public Administration, Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, among others. Since September 2022, Juan Carlos is the principal investigator of the Spanish Ministry of Science-funded project MUNMIGRA on local policy responses to the presence of precarious migrants in Spanish cities.

Sofia Ntaliou (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the School of Social Justice, Social Policy and Social Work, University College Dublin. Her current research centers on local citizenship for immigrants, focusing on Athens, Greece, and Dublin, Ireland. With an MSc in Human Geography from the University of Amsterdam and a MEng & BEng in Spatial Planning from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, her background includes investigating urban social movements, immigration, and supporting immigrants professionally and personally.

Dr. Helge Schwiertz is a postdoctoral research associate at the Chair of Sociology and Social Theory at Universität Hamburg and corresponding member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University. His research focuses on social and political theory, theories of radical democracy, citizenship and solidarity, social movements and urban protest, racism and migration. He is currently working on a research project linking migration studies and social theory, and leading the international research project Enacting Citizenship and Solidarity in Europe "From Below": Local Initiatives, Intersectional Strategies and Transnational Networks [ECSEuro] (https://europefrombelow.net/ (external link) ). Since 2014 he is co-editor of movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies

Julia Scheurer is a political scientist and has been active in refugee and migration policy for many years. She studied at University of Bielefeld, University of Amsterdam, SciencePo Paris and Freie Universität Berlin. As a speaker at a German Refugee Council (Flüchtlingsrat NRW, in the management of the Berlin job counseling network for refugees (MoBiBe), and most recently as project manager at a nationwide network of journalists (Neue Deutsche Medienmacher:innen), she campaigned against racism and for more humane, progressive migration policies and politics. As project leader of Moving Cities' she is shaping its political strategy and expanding its network.

Dr. Corina Lacatus is Associate Professor in Global Governance at Queen Mary University of London. She is principal investigator in a project funded by British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, which explores the governance of care for migrants in three cities located on the Canary Islands in Spain. She has research migration cross-disciplinarily for over twenty years. As a PhD student Germanic Studies at University of California Los Angeles, she began working on questions of migration and identity representation through art, literature and cinema  the humanities in Europe, with a focus on migrant communities living in Stockholm, Sweden. Her book, The (In-)visibility Complex, was published by Stockholm University Press in 2008. She started her career as a political scientist during her second PhD at the London School of Economics and has published extensively on different areas of global governance. Her second research monograph, The Strength of Our Commitments, is published by Chicago University Press in 2024.

Dr. Catharina Peeck-Ho is a sociologist working on citizenship, especially struggles for citizenship and belonging, transnational migration, race and gender from an intersectional perspective. Her current project 'Citizenship Regimes and Irregular Migration. A Comparison of U.S. Sanctuary Cities and Solidarity Cities in Europe' focuses on the possibilities of solidarity-based strategies to include migrants at the city level. While usually based at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, Peeck-Ho holds the John F. Kennedy Fellowship at the Center for European Studies (CES), Harvard University for the academic year 2023/24.

Dr. Henrik Lebuhn is Assistant Professor for Urban and Regional Sociology at Humboldt University, Berlin. His research interests include urbanism in comparative perspective, urban citizenship, cities and migration, public space, participatory politics, and care in the city. His work has appeared in journals such as City, IJURR and Urban Studies. In 2016, he was an ARC-Fellow at the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2019 he was Visiting Professor for Urban Studies at TU Vienna, Austria. In 2022, he co-edited the book Care and the City: Encounters with Urban Studies (Routledge) and a special issue Making cities through migration industries (Urban Studies).

Florita Gunasekara is a practitioner in the fields of climate migration, disaster resilience, and urban democracy. She was most recently the Assistant Director of Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where she led public programs and research projects that bring together policy experts from cities around the world. Florita’s research ranges from the critical analysis of international agreements on migration to interviews with communities who have been displaced by climate disasters. She has also conducted workshops for municipal and national government officials to enable a more effective response to global challenges. Previously, she worked for the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Volunteers, and the International Organization for Migration in Sri Lanka.

Véronique Lamontagne is a lawyer with more than 20 years of experience on international development carrying out rule of law and human rights mandates in 15 countries. For the last 6 years, Véronique has dedicated her work to urban issues and city diplomacy. Until recently, she held the position of Director of the International Relations Office at the City of Montreal and previously, the positions of Head of the Strategic Planning and Acting Director of the Bureau d'intégration des nouveaux arrivants de Montréal (BINAM).  Among her achievements, she delivered the first citywide strategic plan, Montréal 2030 (external link)  and she played an active role in the mobilization of cities in connection with the negotiations of the United Nations Compacts on Migration and Refugees. She also contributed to the startup of the Mayors Migration Council. 

Dr. Loren B Landau is Professor of Migration and Development at the University of Oxford (external link) , Research Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration & Society (external link) , and co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab (external link)  (MGL). He previously held visiting and faculty positions at Princeton, Georgetown, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. His interdisciplinary scholarship explores mobility, multi-scale governance, and the transformation of socio-political communities across the Global South. 

Dr. Marie McAuliffe is the head of the Migration Research & Publications Division at IOM (external link)  headquarters in Geneva and Editor of IOM’s flagship World Migration Report. She is an international migration specialist with 25 years of experience in migration as a practitioner, program manager, senior government official and researcher. Dr. McAuliffe has researched, published and edited widely in academic and policy spheres on migration and is on the editorial boards of journals International Migration, Migration Studies and Migration and Development, and is an Associate Editor of the Harvard Data Science Review. She edits IOM’s World Migration Report in partnership with leading migration researchers. 

Dr. Monica Varsanyi is a scholar of migration, membership, and the state, with a specific focus on unauthorized immigration and immigration federalism in the United States. Dr. Varsanyi is interim associate provost for academic affairs and dean for humanities and social sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of geography in CUNY's Earth and Environmental Sciences Ph.D. Program (external link)  and on the faculty of the International Migration Studies M.A. Program (external link) .  

Dr. Brenda Yeoh is Raffles Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Geography, as well as the Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute (external link, opens in new window) , National University of Singapore. Dr. Yeoh's research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and she has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration research in Asia, including cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migration; gender, social reproduction and care migration; migration, national identity and citizenship issues; globalising universities and international student mobilities among other themes.