Global Migration on the Ground

Partner universities:

• Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany)
• Sapienza Università di Roma (Italia)
• Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
• University of Bucharest (Romania)
• Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique)

Professors:

Elena Ambrosetti is a demographer with PhD at Sciences Po. She currently works as Full Professor at the MEMOTEF Department at Sapienza Università di Roma. She works on international migration in Italy, with special attention to migrants’ integration, migration policies, sexual and reproductive health of migrant populations. Additionally, she studies demography of the Mediterranean countries, more specifically her research focuses on fertility transition in Egypt adopting a gender perspective. In her research she uses quantitative methods and yet she is open to new research fields and to multidisciplinary research.

Francesco Battaglia is Associate professor in European Union Law at the Department of Political Science, Sapienza Università di Roma, where he teaches European Union Law and Institutions. Author of several publications, including Il Mediatore europeo (Cacucci editore, 2020).

Manuel Dieterich is a Sociologist at the University of Tübingen. He is currently working on his PhD about the dynamics in and between two adjacent neighborhoods with diverse and unequal population groups in the west of Johannesburg. The research focus is on the nexus of how the perception of threats influences through moralizations the (re-)configuration of the local diversity. Using an ethnographic approach, his research perspective is relational, focusing on interactional practices. His research interests include the sociology of morality, neighborhood/urban studies, social inequality, migration and diversity and the sociology of knowledge.

Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot is FNRS research associate and senior lecturer at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) at the Université libre de Bruxelles. She co-coordinates the Master Erasmus Mundus “Transnational migrations” (MITRA) at the ULB and co-presides as vice president the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. Her ongoing research focuses on Belgian-Asian couples (BelMix) and the decision-making process of people called “Asians” aspiring to migrate towards or remigrate within the European Union (AspirE).

Bani Gill is a Junior Professor at the Institute for Sociology, University of Tübingen. She is a qualitative sociologist grounded in ethnographic sensibilities and a regional focus on South Asia and contemporary Africa-India encounters. Her research interests include urbanisms, migration, race and racialization, gender, and the sociology of law, bureaucracy and the state.

Pierluigi Montalbano is Full Professor of International Economic Policy at Sapienza Università di Roma and Associate Professor at the same Faculty of the University of Sussex (UK). He is also Director of MSc. on "Migration and Development", at Sapienza Università di Roma. His research interests lie at the crossover between International Economics and Development with a focus on migration, vulnerability, food insecurity, global value chains and impact evaluation for development programs.

Franziska Müller, M. A. in Intercultural Communication, Psychology and Political Science, is a staff member at the sub-section Civic Engagement and Service-Learning at the University of Tübingen. She is responsible for coordinating, designing and implementing courses for students within the CIVIS Micro-programme Civic Engagement as well as offering training on designing and implementing Service-Learning projects for lecturers.

Boris Nieswand is Professor for Sociology of Migration and Diversity at the University of Tübingen. He has obtained his PhD in social anthropology from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 2008 and his diploma in sociology from the University of Bielefeld in 2000. Boris Nieswand was a visiting professor at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen and a PhD-candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. He has published on transnationalism, migration theory, charismatic Christianity, diaspora formation, diversity, migration regimes, threat and ethnography.

Iris-Niki Nikolopoulos holds a PhD in Political Science and heads the Transdisciplinary Course Programme, including the Civic Engagement and Service-Learning sub-section at the University of Tübingen. Since 2013, her focus has been on interdisciplinary teaching and the development of transdisciplinary teaching and learning formats in Higher Education in cooperation with community partners. Since 2020, she has been involved in the continuous development of the CIVIS Micro-Programme Civic Engagement as coordinator and lecturer.

Gabriela Nisipeanu is historian, currently a Research Assistant at the University of Bucharest. She is specialist in international student mobility and educational policy. She completed her PhD in 2024, focusing on the impact of ERASMUS mobility programs. Beyond her research, she plays an active role in academic initiatives, such as coordinating courses within the CIVIS network. Nisipeanu also serves as a member of editorial boards for academic journals and continues to engage in consultancy work, combining her expertise in project management with her passion for education and policy development.

Glaucia Peres da Silva is a sociologist, specialized in globalization and cross-border processes. Her PhD in economic sociology focused on the formation of global markets, analyzing the case of the world music market. At the University of Tübingen, she is responsible for the development of Global Awareness Education with a focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences. The focus of her work is the inter- and transdisciplinary teaching on globalization, international networking and development of transfer projects.

Inês Raimundo holds a PhD in Forced Migrations and Human Geography. She has comprehensive research experience, working in multidisciplinary teams inside and outside Mozambique. The work with researchers from the countries of the Community for the Development of Southern Africa (SADC), Brazil, Portugal, Canada, England and the United States of America stands out. In addition, she has extensive experience in qualitative research methodology, which is essential for understanding the reproductive behaviours of the population and the social roles of each individual or community member. Her research experience at the Centre for Policy Analysis at Eduardo Mondlane University puts her in a comfortable position to design policies for Population and Health.

Sergei Shubin a Professor and Director of the Centre of Migration Policy Research at Swansea University, one of the UK’s leading centres of migration studies. His interests in migration studies and mobility and inequality have been developed through international research and teaching experiences in Russia, UK, France, New Zealand and Canada. His varied research outputs include multi-disciplinary publications with anthropologists, economists, historians, education scholars and health scientists, as well as 3 exhibitions, 4 short films, multi-lingual children’s storybook and an article in one of the highest circulation broadsheet newspapers.