Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas
Senior Research Fellow & BRIDGES Scientific Coordinator
Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas is a Senior Research Fellow in the area of Migrations and Research Coordinator at CIDOB, as well as BRIDGES Scientific Coordinator. PhD cum laude in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and BA in History and Anthropology from the University of Barcelona. Her PhD thesis was awarded the Dutch Sociological Association (NSV) prize for the best sociological dissertation defended in the Netherlands in 2009 and 2010. For more than 15 years she has studied immigration and asylum policies from a comparative perspective. She has published several books, such as Markets, citizenship and rights (2012) and Integration, processes and policies in Europe (2014), co-authored with Rinus Penninx. In the last five years she has studied policies and political discourses on asylum in Europe, with a special attention to border policies and state reception systems. She is member of the European network IMISCOE and of the editorial college of the recently created Migration Politics Journal.
Berta Güell
Researcher & BRIDGES Assistant Coordinator
Berta Güell is a Researcher in the area of Migrations at CIDOB and Assistant Coordinator within the BRIDGES project. Doctor in Sociology with an extraordinary award from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and specialised in ethnic entrepreneurship and the Pakistani community in Spain. She has researched the situation of temporary agricultural workers and LGTBI refugees through her contributions to several projects (i.e. ADMIGOV, NIEM) at CIDOB. She has also recently undertaken two investigations on forced and arranged marriages (Recercaixa), and on descendants of Asian background (Josep Irla Postdoctoral Fellowship) at CER-Migracions (UAB). Berta Güell has previously worked on several European projects related to the phenomenon of migration and social exclusion at the European Social Research Unit of the University of Barcelona (UB). She is coordinator of the Labour Market and Immigration Module of the Interuniversity Master in Contemporary Migration of CER-Migracions and has previously been an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the UB.
Moussa Bourekba
Researcher
Moussa Bourekba is a Researcher at CIDOB and Adjunct Professor at Ramon Llull-Blanquerna University (Barcelona). Prior to joining CIDOB, he was Junior Research Fellow at the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed, Barcelona). He also worked as a consultant for the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI, Paris). At CIDOB, he was Researcher and Project Manager for SAHWA (2014-2017), an EU-funded FP-7 project that analysed youth conditions and expectations in Arab Mediterranean countries. He now focuses on processes of radicalisation, violent extremism in Europe and North Africa, and Islam in Western countries. He speaks French, English, Spanish and Arabic.
Francesco Pasetti
Research Fellow
Francesco Pasetti is a Research Fellow at CIDOB in the area of Migrations and adjunct professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). He developed a two-year project on diasporic media at the ASK Research Center (Bocconi University). As PhD candidate at GRITIM-UPF, he delved into the study of migrant integration and its politics. In his thesis, he addressed the issue of integration policies in Europe through a mixed-method investigation, with focus on the political imaginaries that lie beyond citizenship regimes in Italy and Spain. He was also research collaborator for the Migration Policy Center (European University Institute) between 2013 and 2015. Since 2017, he has specialised in policy evaluation based on indicators. Currently, he is working on policies and political discourses on refugees, paying special attention to the Spanish context.
Emmanuel Comte
Senior Research Fellow
Emmanuel Comte is a Senior Research Fellow in the area of Migrations at CIDOB. A graduate of the École normale supérieure in Paris, he earned a European PhD in the History of Europe and of International Relations summa cum laude from Sorbonne University, with a prize-winning thesis on “The Formation of the European Migration Regime”. He has worked at the European University Institute, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Vienna School of International Studies. His research focuses on the history of European Integration and the contemporary history of migration in Europe, aiming to find out when immigration generates disputes and when liberal migration arrangements may occur. He is the author of The History of the European Migration Regime (Routledge, 2018) and has also published in Cold Ward History, Labor History, Le Mouvement social, Relations internationales, and the Journal of European Integration History.
Carme Colomina
Research Fellow
Carme Colomina is a Research Fellow on the European Union, disinformation and global politics at CIDOB, as well as an Editor and member of the Editorial Board. She is also a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and at Blanquerna-Universitat Ramon Llull. Graduated in Information Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and with a postgraduate course in EU Studies from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), she has been Brussels’ correspondent and head of international affairs at Catalunya Ràdio and ARA newspaper. Before joining CIDOB, she also worked as a consultant for various communication projects and was Head of Interregional Cooperation in the Foreign Affairs department of the Catalan government. Currently, she is working on the technological socio-political challenges shaping the European public sphere and, more particularly, on how technology has impacted public debates, democratic processes and the reliability of discourses.
Marina Utgés
BRIDGES Project Manager
Marina Utgés works as Project Manager at CIDOB, where she manages the BRIDGES project. She is Research Project Manager since 2006, with experience on the promotion, coordination and economic management of international projects, primarily from the European Commission Funding Programmes (H2020, FP7, etc.). Graduated in Political Science and Administration from the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and with a postgraduate degree in Economic Management and Financial Control by IDEC-UPF. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Public Management jointly offered by the UPF, the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Barcelona (UB). She is specialised in the management of large consortiums and complex research projects, mostly in the fields of social and environmental sciences. Prior to joining CIDOB, she was project manager at the UAB (2012-2018), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (2009-2012) and the Ramon Llull University (2007-2009), as well as research assistant at IESE Business School (2006-2007).
Cristina Sala i Soler
BRIDGES Communications Officer
Cristina Sala i Soler is Communications Assistant at CIDOB, where she is in charge of BRIDGES communication and dissemination activities. Graduated in Journalism by the Universitat de València (UV), she holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations by the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). She is pursuing a PhD at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where she is also a part-time lecturer in International Relations since 2018. She has previous experience in the media and the private sector, as well as in EU-funded projects: as Research and Communications Manager of the think tank network EuroMeSCo, led by the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed); and as Research Assistant for the MENARA project, coordinated by CIDOB. Her areas of interest include the politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Euro-Mediterranean relations, political Islam, and the intersection of religion and International Relations, with focus on the role of religious transnational actors in world politics.
Ferruccio Pastore
Director & BRIDGES Scientific Co-coordinator
Ferrucio Pastore is the Director of FIERI since 2009 and BRIDGES Scientific Co-coordinator. After obtaining a PhD in Law by the European University Institute (EUI) in 1996, he was post-doctoral fellow at the University of Firenze and Deputy Director of the Rome-based Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSPI). In 2019, he obtained a qualification as full professor in Legal and Political Sociology from the Ministry of Education and Universities of Italy. Besides his research activities, he has also worked as an adviser on migration policy issues for Italian institutions – such as the National Council of Economy and Labour and the Schengen Parliamentary Committee – and international organisations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Labor Organization (ILO). He has published extensively on migration policies and politics in Europe and at the international level, and he is actively engaged in public debates.
Irene Ponzo
Deputy Director
Irene Ponzo is the Deputy Director of FIERI. She obtained her PhD in Comparative Sociological Research by the University of Turin in 2006. Her main research interests are migrant and refugee integration processes and their governance at the national and local levels. More recently, she has started to work on narrative-making processes related to migration with a specific focus on the interaction between local media and policy communities. She has a been project manager and FIERI’s main researcher in several EU-funded projects on local integration policies and inclusion dynamics like EU-MIA and Concordia Discors. She has also been involved in several H2020 projects on migration such as CEASEVAL, TRAFIG, Welcoming Spaces and Whole-COMM.
Andrea Pogliano
Research Affiliate
Andrea Pogliano is Lecturer in Sociology of Media and Communication at the University of Piemonte Orientale. He is also Research Affiliate at FIERI and member of the Editorial Board of Sociologica. International Journal for Sociological Debate. He obtained his PhD in Sociology by the University of Milan in 2008 and his main research interests include media representations and production, migration and communication. He has been involved in several EU-funded projects on migration, such as Concordia Discors and AMICALL, and he has also worked on the politicisation on refugees for the H2020 CEASAVAL project. He has experience as curator of photo exhibitions and screenwriter of two short documentary films on migration in Italy.
Marcello Maneri
Research Affiliate
Marcello Maneri is a Research Affiliate at FIERI and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano Bicocca, where he teaches Media and Cultural Sociology. After obtaining a PhD in Sociology at the University of Trento in 1995, he was involved in several national and EU-funded projects on migration, security, and racism. He is and has been a member of the Editorial/Scientific Board of several journals such as Contemporary Sociology, Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, Asylon(s), Cartografie Sociali, Conflitti Globali and Progetto CittàSicure. His research focuses on news and migration, racism, public discourse on crime and security, and moral panics. He is currently finalising a book with Ann Morning on the notions of genealogical groups’ essentialised difference in Italy and the United States, which will be published by Russell-Sage in 2022.
Emanuela Roman
Researcher
Emanuela Roman is a Researcher at FIERI. She obtained her PhD in Human Rights by the University of Palermo in 2017. She holds an MA in Human Rights from the University of Padova and a LLM from the International University College of Turin. Her interests include: migration governance in the Mediterranean; the externalisation and informalisation of EU migration, asylum and border management policies and their impact on migrants’ rights; the EU return and readmission policies; immigration detention; and the reception and integration of asylum-seekers and refugees in Italy. She has been involved in H2020 projects like MEDRESET, CEASAVAL and TRAFIG. She is students’ supervisor at the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic of Turin.
Favio Piccoli
Research Affiliate
Flavio Piccoli is a Research Affiliate at FIERI and works as a Data Scientist at dataBreeders, a company dealing with the development of solutions for audience measurement. He obtained his BA in Analysis of Social Processes at the University of Milano Bicocca in 2020, with a particular focus on cultural and media research. He has been involved in a Research Project of National relevance (PRIN) on media and terrorism studies, which has led to the publication of a book chapter. His research interests include: production and framing of news in media events; intermediality and media ecosystems; populism, collective identity and political communication; social movements and memory; racism in news coverage of sport events.
Annalisa Frisina
Annalisa Frisina
Annalisa Frisina is a Research Affiliate at FIERI and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Padova, where she teaches Sociology of Racism and Migration and Qualitative and Visual Methods. She obtained her PhD in Sociology of Communicative and Intercultural Processes at the University of Padova (Unipd) in 2005 and she has extensive research experiences in migration studies and youth studies, with a special expertise on visual and collaborative research methods. She is co-founder of the Research Group SLAN.G (on Social control, Labour, Racism and Migration) at the University of Padova. Among her latest publications are “Art and counter-racialization processes. A qualitative research journey with Italy’s illegitimate children”, in Studi Culturali, (August 2021, no. 2, pp. 243-262), co-authored together with Sandra Agyei Kyeremeh; and the book Razzismi contemporanei. Le prospettive della sociologia (Carocci, 2020).
Christina Boswell
Professor of Politics
Christina Boswell is Chair in Politics and Dean of Research at the University of Edinburgh. She is also Fellow of the British Academy and Chair of the Scottish Government’s Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population. Her most significant contributions include work on the role of narratives in migration policy, the symbolic and instrumental uses of expert knowledge in policy, the use of performance indicators and targets in immigration and asylum, and the role of ideas in political discourse on migration. Her work is comparative, with a focus on the UK, Germany and the EU. She has extensive experience in policy advice for EU institutions and international organisations, including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the UN Global Commission on Migration.
Saskia Smellie
Research Fellow
Saskia Smellie is a Research Fellow and an advanced PhD researcher in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. She is specialising in the politics of migration, comparative immigration policy, and foreign policy, and holds an MSc in International and European Politics from the University of Edinburgh. Her PhD project investigates variation in policy response to the European ‘migrant crisis’ from a foreign policy analysis perspective. She also teaches and lectures at honours level on Europe and international migration. Saskia has previously worked as Public Relations and Policy Officer at the German Consulate General Edinburgh and has experience of consulting the Scottish Government on migration policy.
Verònica Benet-Martínez
ICREA Researcher Professor
Verònica Benet-Martínez is an ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies) Research Professor at UPF, where she is also Head of the Research Group on Behavioral and Experimental Social Sciences. Before her current position, she was a tenured professor at the University of California Riverside and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. She obtained a PhD in Social/Personality Psychology from the University of California at Davis and was a funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an appointed Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and is also an editorial board member for several psychology journals. Her research has been funded by government and private grants from the EU, the United States, and other national and local governments. She has received awards from SPSP and the American Psychological Association.
Luca Barana
Researcher
Luca Barana is a Research Fellow at IAI. His current research focuses on EU’s migration policies, including in the H2020 IT FLOWS project. He is currently Coordinator of the T20 Task Force on Migration. He also studies EU’s relations with Africa, looking at current policy developments in the relations with the African Union and within the post-Cotonou process. He has a research interest in the role of regional integration and multilateral governance in the African continent. He is responsible for managing relations with public and private stakeholders of IAI’s research unit in Turin. After his graduation in European Studies at the University of Studies of Turin, he has been Junior Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (London/Turin) and Program Manager at the Centre for African Studies in Turin.
Daniela Huber
Head of the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme
Daniela Huber is Head of the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme at the IAI and Editor of The International Spectator. She is also adjunct professor at Roma Tre University. She holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Italian national habilitation to function as associate professor in Political Science. Currently, she is work package co-leader in the H2020 EU-LISTCO project, researcher in the Jean-Monnet Network EUMENIA and the H2020 ITFLOWS project, and mentor in the Marie-Curie funded European Joint Doctorate Programme GEMSTONES. She also was the Scientific Coordinator of the H2020 MEDRESET project between 2016 and 2019. Her research interests include International Relations theories and methodologies, contemporary politics in the Middle East, and EU and US foreign policy towards the Middle East. She has published two monographs, 13 peer-reviewed articles, 7 edited books, 6 book chapters and numerous research papers and commentaries.
Asli Selin Okyay
Senior Fellow
Asli Selin Okyay is a Senior Fellow at the IAI, where she coordinates the Institute’s work on migration. Her research focuses on the dynamics and governance of migration in the broader Euro-Mediterranean context, with a particular focus on the external dimension of EU migration and asylum policies. She has conducted research for several H2020 projects such as MEDRESET and EU IDEA. She is currently work package leader in the H2020 ITFLOWS project and a Co-chair of the T20 Task Force on Migration. Before joining IAI in 2017, she was a post-doctoral Research Associate at the ERC-funded “Borderlands” project hosted by the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. She obtained her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in 2015, and her M.Phil in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford in 2009.
Florian Trauner
Professor of Political Science
Florian Trauner holds a Jean Monnet Chair at VUB’s Brussels School of Governance. He is also co-coordinator of the Brussels Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Migration and Minorities (BIRMM) at VUB. He works on European integration with focus on EU asylum, migration, forcible return and counter-terrorism policies. He has authored one monograph, (co-)edited seven books or special issues and authored over fifty book chapters and academic articles that have been published in prominent journals and houses like Oxford University Press. He is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin and he held permanent or visiting positions at the University of Vienna, the University of China, Science Po Paris, and the EU Institute for Security Studies. He acted as an external expert on migration and enlargement-related issues for the European Parliament, the European Commission and the International Centre for Migration Policy Development.
Ilke Adam
Professor of Political Science
IIlke Adam is a Professor of Political Science at VUB’s Brussels School of Governance. She is also co-coordinator of the Brussels Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Migration and Minorities (BIRMM) at VUB. Her research focuses on the multi-level governance of immigration, immigrant integration and anti-discrimination policies, as well as on anti-racist activism, multiculturalism and (sub-state) nationalism. She (co-)authored three monographs and around 40 academic articles and book chapters, and (co-)edited three books, among which there are Intergovernmental Relations on Immigrant Integration in Multi-Level States (Routledge, 2021) and Migration, Equality and Racism. 40 Opinions (ASP Publishing/VUB Press, 2021). She teaches Diversity Policies in the EU and EU Immigration Policies in the Advanced Master on European Integration at VUB, and she is regularly consulted by European and national policymakers and journalists.
Omar N. Cham
PhD Researcher
Omar N. Cham, originally from The Gambia, is a PhD candidate at the Brussels School of Governance and the Department of Political Science of Vrije University Brussels (VUB). His PhD research focuses on the politics of return migration in The Gambia. He seeks to explore how migration cooperation between The Gambia and the EU evolved with transition to democracy in 2016. His research interests include EU-Africa cooperation in migration issues and externalisation policies. Omar holds a Master’s Degree in Social Policy and Social Services from Istanbul University, a Master’s Degree in Management from VUB, and a Bachelor’s Degree (with Honours) in Development Studies from the University of The Gambia.
Bastian Vollmer
Professor of Social Sciences
Bastian Vollmer is a Professor of Social Sciences and Co-director of the Institute of Applied Research and International Relations at CUAS Mainz. He is also Research Affiliate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society of the University of Oxford, where he previously held several Research Fellowships (2008-2016). He was a Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Tübingen (2016-2017). He is author and co-editor of several books and special issues, and he has published in in journals such as Political Geography, Mobilities, Geopolitics, Migration Studies, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, The American Historical Review, and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. His monographs have been published by Palgrave Macmillan and his forthcoming book Border Revisited: Discourses on the UK Border will be released in 2021. He is co-editor of Migration Studies at Oxford University Press and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Markus Rheindorf
Research Fellow
Markus Rheindorf is a Research Fellow at CUAS Mainz and Lecturer at the University of Vienna and the Central European University, specialising in critical discourse studies and academic writing. He studied Linguistics and English at the University of Vienna and the University of Amsterdam, and he holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics by the University of Vienna. His research interests include the mediatisation of political discourse, the interplay between politics and policy, political advertising and campaigning, and populist discourse. He has a continuing interest in methodological innovation within critical discourse studies, especially regarding triangulation and mixed methods. He has received fellowships from the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) and the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) of Vienna. His latest book, Revisiting the toolbox of discourse studies: New Trajectories in Methodology, Open Data and Visualization, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.
Anneke Schröder
Assistant and PhD candidate
Anneke Schröder is an Assistant and PhD candidate at CUAS Mainz. She holds a Master of Arts in French Culture Studies and Intercultural Communication, Spanish Philology and Business Studies by Saarland University and Universidad Veracruzana, including internships in France, Luxembourg and Mexico. From 2016 to 2019, she worked as Assistant at the Romance Languages and Literature Department of Saarland University. She joined the CUAS Mainz’s International Office in 2020, where she is coordinator of International Relations. She is also PhD candidate on Migration Studies at CUAS Mainz and teaches in the Bachelor of Arts in “Social Sciences: Migration and Integration” offered by this University.
Lucila Rodríguez-Alarcón
CEO & Co-founder
Lucila Rodríguez-Alarcón is the CEO and co-founder of por Causa, and BRIDGES Impact Manager. An agronomical engineer and specialist in crisis management by education, she started her career directing a lobby consultancy in Brussels. She was then Director of Public Affairs at Weber Shandwick and Communications Director at Oxfam Spain and the Madrid City Council. She is a regular columnist in the section Con M de Migraciones poweredby Público.es newspaper,and in the blog 3500 millones, within El País.com. She has also published in international media like The Guardian. She is part of the jury of the European Press Prize and Reporters in the Field, as well as adviser to various local, regional and national public administrations, mainly in Europe and Latin America. She is also Lecturer at the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid.
Chantal Gª de la Riva Touzet
Headmaster of Management
Chantal García de la Riva Touzet is Headmaster of Management at por Causa. She graduated in Social Work with specialisation in education, orientation and training by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and she also holds a degree in Administration and Human Resources. She has more than 15 years of experience in project administration and financial control, being an expert in the development and implementation of management and marketing plans. She counts with a long trajectory in the management of social projects, mainly based on topics like childhood and youth.
José Bautista
Senior Research Journalist
José Bautista is a Senior Research Journalist specialised on migrations and economy at por Causa. His experience includes media coverage and reporting on the Balkans route, the settlements of Calais and Paris, corruption involving the migration control industry in Europe’s southern border and the impact of migrations in large areas of Spain currently undergoing depopulation. He currently collaborates with The New York Times, and has previously worked for Agencia EFE, Folha de São Paulo, La Marea and the Economic Commission for Latina American and the Caribbean. He has also published in El Confidencial, Eldiario.es, Le Figaro, El País and Público. He holds a Degree in Journalism by the University of Málaga and a double Master’s Degree in Economics and Latin-American International Affairs by the Sorbonne University (Paris 3).
Vanesa Martín
Communications Coordinator
Vanesa Martín is Communications Coordinator at por Causa. She is an anthropologist specialising in international cooperation and human rights. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Cooperation from the Carlos III University of Madrid. She worked in International Cooperation at the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador managing the European Cooperation. She is a regular columnist in the section Con M de Migraciones powered by Público.es newspaper. She has developed her career in the field of communication and the development of strategies, contents and actions to raise awareness and boost social mobilisation in third sector organisations such as Movimiento por la Paz, focusing her work on the analysis of migratory processes and new narratives.
Julia Delfini
Communications Officer
Julia Delfini is Communications Officer at por Causa. She studied Social Communication at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Analysis and Institutional Consulting from the University of Barcelona (UB). She has specialised in the development of communication strategies with social impact and community building in several third sector organisations in Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. She has also produced independent projects such as Las voces del socavón, a documentary film on the miners’ radios in Bolivia and their role in the worker unions’ struggle in the second half of the 20th century.
Virginie Guiraudon
CNRS Research Director
Virginie Guiraudon (PhD Harvard, 1997) is Research Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Sciences Po Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE). Her research interests lie in the comparative politics of immigration, antidiscrimination and citizenship. Her current work focuses on the drivers and effects of the Europeanization of immigration, asylum and border policies. She was the 2013 recipient of the ECPR Mattei Dogan prize in European Political Sociology. She has been Marie Curie Chair Professor at the European University Institute and a visiting professor at Princeton University, UCLA, Doshisha University (Kyoto), UNISA (Pretoria), and the Madrid Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies. She currently chairs the ECPR Standing Group on the EU and sits on several editorial boards, including Comparative European Politics and Gouvernment et action publique. She has (co-)edited a number of volumes, including The Sociology of the European Union (Palgrave, 2011), with Adrian Favell.
Hélène Thiollet
CNRS Permanent Researcher
Hélène Thiollet (PhD Sciences Po, 2007) is a permanent Researcher of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Sciences Po Centre for International Studies (CERI). Her research deals with the politics of migration and asylum in the Global South, and she focuses on the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. She teaches International Relations, Comparative Politics and Migration Studies at Sciences Po and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. She was also a Visiting Student at Harvard University (2002-2003) and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Oxford University (2009-2010). She is a board member of Migration Politics and Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationale and has co-edited several volumes, including Migration, Urbanity and Cosmopolitanism in a Globalized World (Springer IMISCOE series, 2021). She has headed several national and European projects on migration-related topics such as MobGlob, PACE and MAGYC.
Marie Moncada
Postdoctoral Fellow
Marie Moncada is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE). She obtained her PhD on Political Science by the University of Paris-Saclay in 2019. Her thesis deals with undocumented migrants’ access to healthcare in France and the United States. The core of her research activities lies in public policy and the concerns about how to identify and test the parameters that influence its establishment and implementation. She is also interested in exploring the advantages and disadvantages of grounded theory and the use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. At BRIDGES, she carries out media and social media analysis, and also participates in the study of the impact of migration narratives on French and EU policymaking.
Endre Sik
Research Professor
Endre Sik is a Research Professor at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA), and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He is PhD (1985) and Doctor of Sciences (2006) in Sociology by the MTA. He was also Deputy Chair of the Committee of Sociology at MTA and President of the Hungarian Sociological Association. He has lectured at the University of Toronto, Notre Dame University, the Central European University in Prague, and the Global Camps of Human Rights in Venice. He is the member of IMISCOE’s Maria Baganha Committee. He is the head of research of several projects funded by TK and the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund and has participated in EU-funded projects such as CEASEVAL, STYLE, Concordia Discourse, Euborderegions, and Workcare Synergy. His interests include migration, xenophobia, border studies, network and content analysis, and economic sociology.
Márton Gerő
Research Fellow
Márton Gerő is a Research Fellow at the at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA). He is also an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University. His main research interest includes civil society, social movements, and the processes of political integration. He has published in the Journal of Civil Society, Central and East European Politics and Society and the Czech Political Science Review. Currently, he is developing a postdoctoral project on ´Civil society, enemy images and redistribution: The interplay between structural factors and political action in the process of de-democratization´ (NKFIH -134768) and serves as a principal investigator of the project titled as ´(De-)democratization and the trajectories of civil society´ at TK.
Éva Bognár
Associate Researcher
Éva Bognár is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA), and Senior Program Officer and Researcher at the Centre for Media, Data and Society of the Central European University ‘s (CEU) Democracy Institute. She has participated in EU-funded projects on violent online political extremism, media pluralism, press and media freedom; as well as on projects funded by the Open Society Foundations on Hungarian media laws in Europe, misinformation, and Hungarian media ownership. She is the Hungarian contributor to the Digital News Report, a major comparative project led by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. She has recently focused her research on disinformation on minorities and migrants, and on the representation of migration in Hungarian media. Her background is in Sociology.
Zsolt Szabolcsi
Associate Researcher
Zsolt Szabolcsi is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA). He holds an MA in Nationalism Studies from the Central European University in Budapest and is currently a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Social Research Program at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University. His area of expertise is political psychology, with a special focus on priming, and his research focuses on the impact of media-driven associations triggering opinion formation. His wider scope of interest also includes research on news management on different media platforms, such as television, social media or online news portals in Central European countries.
Péter Kerényi
Research Assistant
Péter Kerényi is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA). He is an undergraduate student at University College London, where he studies Politics, Sociology and East European Studies: an interdisciplinary course focused on the study of the societies and political systems of Central and Eastern Europe. His research interests mainly revolve around political and social theory, specifically theories of justice and theories of alienation, as well as qualitative (discourse and thematic) social research. His undergraduate thesis is centred around the discursive nationalism of the Hungarian Prime Minister, revealing the discursive-ideological tools used by the PM to construct his conception of the Hungarian ‘nation’ in his Covid-related political communication. As a part of BRIDGES, he contributed to two case studies analysing processes of narrative formation in Hungarian media articles surrounding two migration-related events.
Ráchel Surányi
Ráchel Surányi
Rachel Surányi is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Sociology – Centre for Social Sciences (TK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence (MTA). She holds a PhD in Sociology, in which she studied the identification and integration of Hungarians who live(d) in Israel. She has participated in several EU-funded projects on identity, minorities (ENRI-EAST, EUBORDERREGION), and the refugee crisis (CEASAVAL). She is interested in migration and Jewish studies and is specialised in qualitative research methods. She has also volunteered in several organisations on both fields: she dealt with Jews and Anti-Semitism at Haver and the Muslim Jewish Conference and later co-founded the Salaam-Shalom Initiative in Budapest; and also helped migrants and refugees in Hungary at the Menedék Foundation, Artemisszió and during the refugee crisis in 2015. Now she works part-time as a communication expert at Mobilissimus Ltd.
Jan-Paul Brekke
Senior Research Fellow
Jan-Paul Brekke is a Senior Research Fellow in the Migration and Integration Research Area at ISF. He holds a PhD Sociology from the University of Oslo. He is a member of the IMISCOE network and has engaged as an expert by IMISCOE under the H2020 CROSS MIGRATION project. He has served as an expert for the EU Commission evaluating H2020 applications and projects in the field of migration and integration. He is a frequent media commentator and has been invited by the EU Commission, the Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (IGC) and the General Directors of Immigration Services Conference (GDISC) as speaker on the topic of media campaigns directed at migrants. He has recently conducted research on social media information campaigns launched by the EU, the IOM and UNHCR and targeted at potential migrants, including fieldwork in Khartoum, Sudan. He is head of the bi-annual Integration Barometer.
Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud
Research Professor
Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud is a Research Professor at ISF, in the areas of Politics, Democracy and Civil Society, and Migration and Integration Studies. She is a political scientist and holds a PhD in Media and Communication from the University of Oslo. She has headed several international, multi-method and comparative research projects, including the Mediation of Migration project, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Her research focuses on the global spread of stories on migration between different media and personal networks, including fieldwork among migrants and media analysis in the Iraqi Kurdistan. She is expert in mixed method studies, combining surveys, quantitative media analysis and in-depth fieldwork. She frequently serves as a media commentator and publishes in international media, migration and political science journals. Her current research focuses on the right wing and anti-immigration debate in a new media landscape, heading a research project on the monitoring of free speech in Norway.
Giulia Tornari
Founder & Executive Director
Giulia Tornari is ZONA’s Founder and Executive Director, and Director of the photo agency Contrasto since 2018. She studied Fine Arts and acquired experience in the field of photography at the Rome-based Istituto Superiore di Fotografia e Comunicazione Integrata (ISFCI), immediately followed by a position at Contrasto in 1991. She held various positions in this photo agency, including Curator and Director of the photographic archive, and later Director and PR Coordinator of publications. Since 2005, she has coordinated staff photographers and curated numerous award-winning photography projects at the international level. She also supervises contacts with national and international publications. She has offered courses and workshops in leading photographic institutions in Italy and currently teaches at the Rome University of Fine Arts (RUFA).
