The IMISCOE PhD Network aims to strengthen research and network opportunities for doctoral researchers in the field of migration (and herewith related topics). The PhD Network is organised upon the Network Board, the Blog Group, and the broader PhD Network community, which consists of the PhD Representative(s) of the standing committees (SCs) and the PhD Academy, each with their active members who plan and carry out activities relevant for PhD migration scholars. The PhD Network is represented by the PhD Representative and the Vice-Representative and steered by the PhD Network Board.
PhD Network Board:
Billie Martiniello
PhD Representative
Billie Martiniello is a PhD researcher in sociology affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium. Her work focuses on understanding and tackling discrimination on the (rental) housing market, with a focus on a local level-approach. In this context, she worked on multiple projects for local governments (Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven, Kortrijk, Namur & Bruges) in Belgium to measure discrimination in an objective way by means of correspondence testing. Her recent work took the methodology of correspondence testing under the loop, by analysing the validity and meaning of using names to signal ethnic origin when measuring ethnic discrimination. Besides, she analyses the (non-)adoption of local anti-discrimination policy and actions of multiple Belgian cities.
Agnese Pacciardi
PhD Vice-Representative
Agnese is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Lund, Sweden. Her project looks at European border externalisation in Senegal with the aim of producing a better understanding of how these policies are negotiated, adapted or resisted by those targeted by them. Since 2023, she is Vice-Chair representative of the IMISCOE PhD Network Board and PhD Representative of the GenSem SC.
Silvia Talavera Lodos
PhD Vice-Representative
Silvia is a PhD Candidate at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy). Graduated in Law, she holds a Master's degree in Human Rights. Her research focuses on the impact of decentralisation on the protection of the social rights of migrants in an irregular administrative situation
Elina Jonitz
Elina Jonitz is a PhD candidate at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Erasmus University Rotterdam. In her research, she focuses on the governance of refugee integration in small towns and rural areas, regularization opportunities in the context of non-deportability in Europe, as well as migrants’ lived experiences over time. From 2021-2024 she was part of the European Whole-COMM research project.
Diletta Marcucci
PhD candidate at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona and GRITIM-UPF coordinator: “Interdisciplinary Research Group on Immigration”. She is also a doctoral researcher in the research project BROAD-ER: “Bridging the Migration and Urban Studies Nexus” (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021). Her research within Urban Intercultural Governance focuses on the connection between intercultural participation and segregation.
Alice Fill
PhD Candidate in International Relations and International Law at the École Normale Supérieure (Chair in Geopolitics of Risk), in Paris, and at the University of Roma Tre (Law School). She is a Fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations (CNRS). Her research project investigates digitalisation and datafication processes in West Africa that specifically target people on the move, amid border controls and humanitarian assistance. Moving from an interdisciplinary perspective that articulates Critical Security Studies and Science and Technology Studies in dialogue with International Human Rights Law, the project explores the multi-layered implications of these trends in key areas of migration governance.
Filipa Saraiva
Filipa Saraiva is a PhD candidate in Sociology of the State, Law, and Justice at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC) and the Centre for Social Studies (CES). Her research delves into the intersections of climate change, overfishing, and migration, with a focus on young people's aspirations in Cape Verde’s coastal communities.
Katharina Klaunig
Katharina is a doctoral student in the department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is interested in international migration systems, especially multiple migrations, return migrations, and labor migration to the Gulf.
Yowali Kabamba
Yowali Kabamba has been a PhD candidate in Economic and Social History at Utrecht University since October 2023. She studies the labour integration of Somali migrant women in Western Europe and how home and host country contexts influence their sustainable economic participation.
Teresa Pallarés Ramos
Teresa Pallarés-Ramos is a Brussels-based migration policy analyst and PhD candidate in Migration Studies at Comillas University, Spain. Her doctoral research examines the economic integration of youth migrants at the regional level in Spain, focusing on the utilisation of EU funding mechanisms in this context. With over a decade of professional experience, she specialises in migration, youth empowerment, and educational capacity building. Her academic work complements her practical expertise, allowing her to contribute to the development of sustainable, community-focused policies and initiatives that bridge research and practice.
Fabiana Pineda
PhD candidate in Political Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her doctoral research centers on the role of non-state actors in implementing border externalization policies and strategies in Latin America. Her study takes a bottom-up approach, examining the interactions between these actors and the state(s).
Denis Zekovic
Denis is a research associate at Technical University Chemnitz (Germany) and a junior researcher at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). His current research focuses on the role of the receiving society in integrating refugees and migrants in small and medium-sized cities in Germany. As such, he is interested in the intersection of local receptivity and local resilience regarding migration governance.
Ismail Oubad
Doctoral researcher affiliated with the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM) at the University of Liège and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Genoa. His Ph.D. research, conducted under the ERC AdG SolRoutes project, investigates the (subversive) migration infrastructures that shape the dwelling and movement of illegalized migrants along the Belgian-French migration route to the UK.
Blog Group
The IMISCOE PhD blog forms a platform to share PhD relevant insights from the field of migration research. It is wholly run and written by PhD students from the Network. The content varies from interviews with scholars, reports on the latest conferences and meetings and theoretical contributions from our members. If you’re up for an exciting read, you can check out some of the blog posts at www.imiscoe.org/news-and-blog/phd-blog
Gunika Rishi
Blog Group Coordinator
Gunika Rishi is a Doctoral researcher (2023-26) at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, NTNU, Norway. Her work explores the experiences of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs) during family reunification using ethnographic approaches and a social anthropological lens. She has a background in Architecture (2010-2015) and Urban planning (2018-2020). Her research interests include housing rights, migration, gender studies, race and visual ethnography.
Tulika Bourai
Blog Group Coordinator
Tulika Bourai is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at BITS Pilani, Rajasthan, India. Her study is based in the mountainous regions of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. Her research looks at the current climate crisis in the Himalayas and people's mobility and immobility choices under a resource-constrained scenario.
Aneesha Jonny
Aneesha Johny is pursuing PhD in law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her thesis focuses on the comparative regional analysis of the responses of South Asian and European countries towards Rohingya and Syrian refugees in the context of the principle of non-refoulement. Her key research interests include comparative law, child rights, refugee law and judicial process.
Rohini Mitra
Doctoral student at the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. Her research is focused on forced migration governance, networks, and refugee transnationalism in and beyond South Asia. Her doctoral research examines these themes in the context of the Rohingya refugees in India. Her larger research interests include migrant (and refugee) transnationalism, migration governance regimes, diaspora politics, and the lived experiences of migration. She has completed a Master's in Development Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and worked in India's migration policy and research space.
Nacera Haouchine
Full-time PhD student in International Relations at Keele University, UK. She is based in the School of Social, Political and Global Studies (SPGS). Her research focuses on migration and security studies. She delivered several seminars on Securing Global Order and is lecturing on Human Rights and Global Politics. Nacera is a former editor of Under Construction @ Keele Journal (@UCKeele), and she is currently an editorial assistant for IDEA Journal (@journal_idea) and a blog editor for IMISCOE PhD Blog (@IMISCOE_PhD).
Berfin Nur Osso
Doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki, the Faculty of Law. Her doctoral research project “Access to Right to Have Rights”: Managing Migration at the EU’s External Borders investigates the interplay between the externalization of migration management and the political agency of refugees. This socio-legal project merges theoretical and empirical analyses in the Greek-Turkish context by focusing on the intersections of international refugee law, human rights, border studies, EU asylum law and policy, and legal and political theory. She is also enthusiastic as a political cartoonist about reflecting on the contemporary phenomena within the realm of law and society in her editorial cartoons.
Jami Abramson
PhD candidate in Human Geography at Swansea University. Her research entitled “Sensing Wales: conflicting identities and belonging for ethnic minority young people in Wales” aims to explore ethnic minority young people’s experiences with places, particularly concerning their idea of identity and sense of self. Informed by participant-led methodologies, Jami is using visual methods such as photography and collaging in go-along interviews with young women in Swansea.
Connie Hodgkinson Lahiff
PhD candidate in Law at the University of East Anglia and her socio-legal research focuses on the administration of asylum applications. In her research, she holds a critical gaze on the entanglement of public and private interests involved in asylum decision-making and uses qualitative research methods and Freedom of Information Requests to understand the asylum bureaucracy in the UK. Outside of her PhD, Connie has spent many years volunteering as an immigration casework assistant at a local law centre and is currently training to be an OISC-regulated immigration adviser in the UK.
Gianna Eckert
Gianna Eckert is a PhD student at the University of Bristol Law School. Her research focuses on suspended removal cases and their human rights implications for ‘unreturnable‘ migrants in Germany and the UK. She is a Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative with interests across asylum and refugee law, deportation and citizenship studies, comparative migration law and regularisation practices.
Mimi Ocadiz Arriaga
Multidisciplinary researcher and creative writer focused on migration and mobility from an (African) decolonial perspective. She holds a Research Master in African Studies (cum laude) dedicated to the Cuban medical cooperation in Mozambique and the contemporary embodiment of solidarity and currently works at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam within the Refugee Academy project Engaged Scholarship Narratives of Change. As a PhD candidate, Mimi has theorised and put into practice manifestations of care that enable epistemic justice, which in turn support the decolonisation of academia.
Carol Pierre
Carol Pierre is a Doctoral Research Assistant in the Swiss Forum for Migration Studies and NCCR- on the move, at the University of Neuchatel. Her work explores migration, multiculturalism, social movements, and community building in the latter half of 20th century Britain through using a Peoples History approach. With a background in anthropology and the arts, Carol’s interests are intersectional and her methodologies interdisciplinary.
Yacine Ait Larbi
Yacine Ait Larbi is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in the intersections of colonialism, social change, and migration systems. Building on the work of scholars such as Akin Mabogunje and Abdelmalek Sayad, his research explores how migration systems are configured through fields of practice where aspirations and capabilities emerge, shaping migration agency. Focusing on Algerian migration, Yacine aims to contribute to migration systems theory by investigating why certain feedback trajectories exert greater influence than others.
With over six years of professional experience in migration, he has collaborated with international organizations such as the IOM, UN Algeria, and ODI. His research interests also include migration theory, return and reintegration, regional migration policy harmonisation, and labor recruitment in post-colonial migration systems.
Abigail Sepenu
Abigail Sepenu is a PhD candidate at Trent University, Ontario Canada. Her research explores gender, migration and health, drawing out the strengths of diasporic communities in supporting the postpartum mental health of immigrant women in Sweden, Germany, Canada, UK and USA and jogging their cultural memories about traditional practices from their origin countries that promote healthy postpartum to foster transformative participatory change. Abigail also has an MSc Global Health from Uppsala University, Sweden and M.A. Social Protection from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany.
If you’re interested in contributing to the blog, get in touch here.
Advisory Board
Lucy Potter
PhD candidate in Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her research project examines asylum determination processes in the UK of claims on the grounds of non-religious persecution.
Mateusz M. Krawczyk
PhD candidate in political science and freelance journalist, former managing editor of the Polish monthly "Wszystko Co Najważniejsze". Graduate with a master's degree in political science and economy and several courses related to political science, social anthropology, and journalism. He specialises in refugee and forced migration studies and the agency of vulnerable groups. His current research is focused on the hybrid identity of refugees at the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda.
The PhD Network’s Advisory Board comprises previous PhD Representatives and members of the Soundboard in the preceding year.
Adriana Calvo
Spanish journalist doing her doctoral thesis at the University of Deusto. She researches how undocumented migrant women develop digital communication strategies once settled in destination countries and specialises in political communication.
Irene Gutiérrez Torres
Blog Group Coordinator
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and a PhD fellow at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). She is part of the REEL BORDERS ERC Starting Grant project, focusing on participatory filmmaking in migration and border studies. Her films and research address themes of im/mobility, migration, everyday bordering, and self-representation. As a filmmaker, she has directed "Border Diaries" (2013), "Hotel Nueva Isla" (2014), "Connected Walls" (2015), "Exile Diaries" (2019) and "Between Dog and Wolf" (2020). Her films have been screened in film festivals and art venues such as the Berlinale, Rotterdam IFFR, MoMA Documentary Fortnight and the Lincoln Center.
Sebastian Carlotti
PhD at the University of Pisa and the University of Amsterdam, where he researches selection procedures and visa policies between Europe and West Africa.
Mariia Shaidrova
Maria Shaidrova is a PhD researcher (NWO-funded Research Talent Grant) based at the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands. She holds MSc in Sociology of Migration and Ethnic Studies from the University of Amsterdam (Cum Laude). Maria is focusing her research on understanding the life of the Nigerian community both in Benin City and Palermo.
Sandra N. Morgenstern
Postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and as the chair of Migration and Integration at the University of Mannheim.
Carolin Müller
Cultural studies researcher using methods of cultural anthropology. Her research explores amateur music ensembles in activist spaces and discourses on belonging, integration, and citizenship.
Samuel D. Schmid
Postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland.
Olav Nygård
Lecturer in Ethnic and Migration Studies with a background in Sociology. His research interests cover ethnic and class inequalities in educational opportunity and outcomes, effects of school leaving and segregation, social capital, and extra-curricular activities.
Social Media
The PhD Network has an active Twitter account. We welcome all interested PhDs to join the Facebook group and follow us on Twitter. We post news relevant to IMISCOE, migration research and PhD life in general.