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Home » Presenter Biographies
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Kabir Abdulkareem
University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
Kabir Abdulkareem is a Doctoral Candidate in History and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His area of interest include, African History, Refugee, Gender and Women Studies. Olayemi Bakre is a Doctoral student from the Durban University of Technology who specializes in Poverty, rural development and migrational studies.
Munira Abdulwasi
York University, Canada
Tanya Aberman
Tanya Aberman has a Phd in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies from York University. Her research has focused of intersectional feminsit praxis and critical border studies. She has also worked on the issue of access to education for precarious status students for several years through grassroots projects, advocacy and within the university. She is currently the coordinator for the Centre for Refugee Studies Summer Course at York University.
Jean Roger Abessolo Nguema
Enseignant à l'Université de Douala (Cameroun)/Chercheur invité à l'Université de Montréal (Canada), Cameroun
– Titulaire d'un doctorat en science politique, depuis le 18 décembre 2012, sur la gouvernance des réfugiés au Cameroun;
– Enseignant-chercheur de science politique à l'Université de Douala, à compter du 02 juin 2010;
– Auteur de plusieurs travaux scientifiques sur les réfugiés et les migrations forcées;
– Participant à la conférence annuelle (ACERMIF 2018) via Skype;
– Chercheur invité au Centre de recherche sur les politiques et le développement social à l'Université de Montréal (Canada), du 15 novembre 2018 au 15 octobre 2019.
Anisa Abeytia
East Los Angeles College/Stanford University, United States
Anisa Abeytia is a writer and researcher with an interest in Syria, integration, Norway, identity and refugees. She presents her work internationally and writes regularly on the topics of Syrian refugees, the Middle East and the integration of Muslims and Arabs in Europe. Her latest research focuses on real and digital social-spatiality as sites of social inclusion or exclusion and its impact on integration.
Philip Ackerman
Seneca College, Canada
Philip Ackerman is the Program Coordinator, Social Service Worker Immigrant and Refugee Program at Seneca College. Philip has focused much of his efforts in working with newcomer youth at a Toronto-based, community organization. He also completed a Master's degree in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and is also a graduate of the Seneca Immigrant and Refugee program.
Nafees Ahmad
South Asian University-New Delhi, India
Dr. Nafees Ahmad is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi. He holds a doctorate in international refugee law and human rights, his work focuses on global forced displacement and migrations, climate refugees & climate change human displacement, policy, asylum, durable solutions and SAARC issues. He has introduced a new Program at the SAU called Comparative Constitutional Law of SAARC Nations for LLM along with international human rights and international refugee law. His publications include papers in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Human Rights and Law (Brill), Kings' Student Law Review (King's College London), Groningen Journal of International Law (University of Groningen-The Netherlands), ISIL Year Book on International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law, and ELCOP Year Book of Human Rights-Dhaka etc. Dr. Ahmad has co-authored a book on Climate Refugees in South Asia published by Springer. His book on international refugee law and human rights is in press. Dr. Ahmad is also an active blogger, writer and Op-Ed contributor to many international sites in the fields of forced migration, refugee research, human rights, international relations and diplomacy etc. Dr. Ahmad has been a Resource Person and External Reviewer for the Ministry of Law, Government of India sponsored Research Project on Judicial Reforms since June 2016 at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kashipur. Further, he has been a visiting professor at Indian Society of International Law (ISIL), Jamia Milia Islamia-New Delhi and Judicial Academies of various states of India for Sensitization Programmes on Justicing, Balancing Rules, and the Principles on Gender Justice in the Context of Personal Laws in India. He serves on many committees and editorial boards of many international journals and magazines. Dr. Ahmad has been serving since 2010 as Senior Visiting Faculty to World Learning (WL)-India under the India-Health and Human Rights Program organized by the World Learning, 1 Kipling Road, Brattleboro VT-05302, USA for Fall & Spring Semesters Batches of US Students by its School for International Training (SIT Study Abroad) in New Delhi-INDIA. Dr. Ahmad has also been addressing the Armed Forces establishments' sensitization programmes on international human rights law and international humanitarian law. He is available #24X7 at nafeestarana@gmail.com, drnafeesahmad@sau.ac.in
Sharry Aiken
Faculty of Law, Queen's University, Canada
Sharry Aiken is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen's University where she teaches immigration law, international refugee law, international human rights law, and administrative law. Prior to her appointment at Queen's, Sharry practiced immigration and refugee law with legal aid clinics in Toronto (South Etobicoke Community Legal Services and the Refugee Law Office) and in private practice. A past president of the Canadian Council for Refugees and former editor-in-chief of Refuge (2001-2011), Sharry continues to be actively engaged in research and advocacy on immigration and refugee issues. She is co-author of Immigration and Refugee Law: Cases, Materials and Commentary, Emond Montgomery, which is currently being revised for a 3rd edition as well as the monograph, "Migration Law in Canada" in International Encyclopedia of Laws, Wolters Kluwer.
Marshia Akbar
As a post-doctoral research fellow at York University, Marshia Akbar provides research support for the SSHRC partnership titled 'Migration and Resilience in Urban Canada'(SSHRC 2016-2021), which includes analyzing trends in migration and settlement in Ontario and Quebec metropolitan areas, engaging in knowledge mobilization activities, and publishing journal articles and research reports. She earned a doctorate degree in Geography from York University with a focus on migration and settlement in August 2016. Her research explores the ways in which intersections of race, gender, class and religion/ethnicity influence the labour market integration and settlement process of South Asian immigrants.
Gabrielle Désilets (PhD Australian National University) is a post-doctorate fellow and Project Manager for the Montreal city network of the Building Migrant Resilience in Cities partnership (SSHRC 2016-2021). As an urban anthropologist, her research interest lies on the impact of migration and mobility on identity, on intercultural cohabitation and place-making and belonging in urban areas. Her current research focuses on a neighbourhood approach to foster welcoming communities, by identifying strategies, networks and resources that help migrants in their settlement, but also that equip stakeholders and communities to overcome the challenges of immigration in cities.
Bree Akesson
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Bree Akesson is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the Faculty of Social Work and the Associate Director of the Centre for Security and Surveillance Research at Wilfrid Laurier University. Dr Akesson's research focuses broadly on international social issues, ranging from microlevel understandings of the experiences of war-affected families to macrolevel initiatives to strengthen the global social service workforce. She is currently working on projects in Afghanistan, Ghana, and Lebanon. Her most recent research project explores the experiences of Syrian families who have been displaced by the war in the Syrian Arab Republic and are currently living in Lebanon.
Md Mohsin Ali
ICA Bangladesh, Canada
Md Mohsin Ali is a graduate of the University of Ottawa. He recently completed an MA in Education. During his MA in Globalization and International Development at the uOttawa, Mohsin explored the role of BRAC in non-formal education in Bangladesh. He intends to further explore how immigrant students in Ontario schools are structurally marginalized.
Mustafa Alio
Refugee Career Jumpstart Project, Canada
Mustafa Alio is the co-founder of the Refugee Career Jumpstart Project in Toronto, a refugee led initiative to support employment pathways for refugees, and a member of the international Network for Refugee Voices, an organization that works to ensure refugee participation in policy making in the global refugee regime.
Yukari Ando
Osaka University, Japan
Yukari ANDO is a Guest Associate Professor at Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University in Japan. Her field of study is refugee law and international human rights law. Recently she focuses on the refugee status determination in Japan.
Sedef Arat-Koc
Ryerson University, Canada
Sedef Arat-Koç is Associate Professor at Ryerson University. She teaches in the Department of Politics and Public Administration and in the graduate program in Immigration and Settlement Studies. Sedef's research interests and publications focus on immigration policy and citizenship, especially as they affect immigrant women; politics of imperialism; racialization and the politics of racism; and reconfiguration of social and political identities in Turkey in the context of neoliberalism and post-cold war geopolitics.
Ayar Ata
London South Bank University, United Kindgom
Perhaps my own formal and most informative steps towards active integration or active citizenship in London began when I completed my undergraduate degree at SOAS, University of London in 1997. During the course of studying for a BA in Social Anthropology and Development Studies, I learned more about forced migration and immigration – stories as well as theories. This helped to shape my initial academic interest in migration and citizenship in London. I further completed my postgraduate studies in social policy at Middlesex University in 2000 and forced migration and international human rights studies at University of East London in 2009, and I completed my PhD study on refugee integration in London at London South Bank University (LSBU) in April 2017.
Idil Atak
Idil Atak is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Criminology of Ryerson University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal for Migration and Border Studies and a member of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration's (IASFM) Executive Committee.
Dena Badawi
Dena Badawi is a Master's student at McMaster University in Canada, where she studies global health. She recently completed her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Waterloo, jointly studying Biomedical Science and Peace and Conflict Studies. She is currently working as a research assistant for Dr. Bree Akesson's research with war-affected families.
Kelsey Baird
California State University San Marcos, United States
Kelsey Patricia Baird studies sociology at California State University San Marcos with a focus on medicine, public policy, and inequality. She is a current Killam Fulbright Fellow and a Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Fellow. She is pursuing research around health and forced migration. Her specific focus is on how diagnosis and treatment norms in the U.S. and Canada are experienced and understood by resettling refugees, their larger communities of origin, and mental health professionals providing services. Her work explores how these experiences shape and are shaped by dominant norms of diagnosis, categorization, and treatment.
Olayemi Bakre
Durban University of Technology, South Africa
Olayemi Bakre is a Doctoral student from the Durban University of Technology who specializes in Poverty, rural development and migrational studies.
Ranu Basu
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, York University.
Danièle Bélanger
Université Laval, Canada
Danièle Bélanger is Professor of Geography at the Université Laval in Québec City and holder of the tier 1 Canada Research Chair on Global Migration Processes. Her research examines migrants with precarious status, including temporary migrant workers, trafficked individuals, undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, care migrant workers and marriage migrants. She conducts fieldwork in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Canada to document the structural conditions of migrants' precariousness as well as their agency. Her most recent project examines Syrian refugees in Turkey and analyses actors that manage refugees, the rise of xenophobia and refugees' mobility patterns.
Galya Ben-Arieh
Northwestern University, USA
Galya (Ruffer) Ben-Arieh J.D. ,Ph.D., research centers on the rights and processes of refugee protection and the role of law in settlement and inclusion in host societies and comparative constitutional theory and transformation. She is the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies (CFMS), housed at the Buffett Institute from 2011-2018. In 2015 she received funding to launch a research program on refugee resettlement. She is now continuing this work through the development of a Refugee Knowledge Hub, a community-based partnership providing leadership, knowledge and support for refugees and asylees in our community.
Amar Bhatia
York University, Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada
Bhatia's research looks at issues of status and authority of migrant workers and Indigenous peoples under Canadian immigration law, Aboriginal law, treaty relations, and Indigenous legal traditions. He is interested in research on topics at the intersection of migration, Aboriginal, and Indigenous law, Canadian immigration & refugee law, and the laws and policies of transnational migrant work.
Neil Bilotta
McGill University, Canada
Neil Bilotta is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Work at McGill University. He holds Masters Degrees in Social Work (Smith College School for Social Work, USA, 2011) and Public Health (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health, 2014). During his MSW, Neil spent eight months in post-conflict northern Uganda deconstructing and exploring the realities of cross-cultural social work in a post-conflict setting. Prior to commencing his PhD, Neil spent two years working as social worker with unaccompanied refugee young people, from sub-Saharan Africa, in San Jose, California.
Alexandra Blanchard
A sport fanatic, Alex embarked on her Master's in Development studies at York University to explore the convergence of her two biggest interests: soccer and refugee/settlement issues. She was fortunate enough to partake in 4 months of fieldwork in Glasgow, Scotland where she spent the summer shadowing a grassroots, community football program geared towards refugees and asylum-seekers in the city. Since completing her Master's she is currently working on a journal article that will expand on her thesis and has recently become involved with one of Toronto's leading Sport for Development programs the MLSE Launchpad.
Suzanne Bonfils
Suzanne Bonfils is a McGill University undergraduate student pursuing an Honours degree in Political Science with a Minor in Religious Studies. Her academic interests currently lie in the field of forced migration and Latin American politics. Her article, "China and the North Korean Refugee Crisis: State Sovereignty and the Dangers of 'Strategic Ambivalence'", has been shortlisted for an Undergraduate Student Essay Award by the CARFMS.
Nimo Bokore
Carleton University, School of Social Work, Canada
As a former refugee from Somalia, Dr. Bokore is particularly interested in topics related to mental health and health,resettlement/integration barriers and finding new ways for individuals, family or community healing. Dr. Bokore's education is in research and practice background is in neuroscience and social work; migration and resettlement; forced migration, refugees, trauma and transference; equity and higher education; poverty and social policy.
Gianluca Bortoletto
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
My name is Gianluca Bortoletto and I am Italian. I studied my Bachelor and Master degrees in Economics at the University of Padua, Italy. I graduated from the master program with the maximum grade cum laud and I started a PhD program in Economics at the University of Birmingham. My research focuses on the economic effects of immigration and in particular of asylum seekers. I am now in my third year of Economics PhD.
Megan Bradley
McGill University, Political Science, Canada
Megan Bradley is associate professor of political science and international development studies at McGill University, where her research focuses on refugees and forced migration, human rights, humanitarianism, transitional justice, and natural disasters. She is the author of Refugee Repatriation: Justice, Responsibility and Redress (Cambridge University Press, 2013), editor of Forced Migration, Reconciliation and Justice (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Refugees' Roles in Resolving Displacement and Building Peace: Beyond Beneficiaries (Georgetown University Press, 2019).From 2012-2014, she was a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, where she worked with the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement. She has also worked with UNHCR, and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and served as the Cadieux-Léger Fellow in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Talatu Buba Bello
Taraba State University, Jalingo, Nigeria
Talatu Buba Bello has her doctorate in political science. she is a researcher in the area of conflict and forced migration. She has attended and presented papers at both local and international conference. currently she is affiliated to Taraba State University, Jalingo.
Geoffrey Cameron
Baha'i Community of Canada, Office of Public Affairs, Canada
Dr. Geoffrey Cameron completed his doctorate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar. His dissertation was a comparative study of refugee policy in the United States and Canada, focusing on the role of religious groups in the evolution of institutions governing the resettlement of refugees in both countries. He also works as Director of the Office of Public Affairs of the Baha'i Community of Canada, and has previously been a senior policy advisor at Global Affairs Canada. He has degrees from Trent University and the University of Oxford, and is the co-author (with Ian Goldin) of the book, "Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future" (Princeton University Press, 2012).
Giovanni Carranza
PhD Student, Sociology, York University
Luis Carrillos
Hispanic Development Council, Canada
Youth Worker, Hispanic Development Council, Toronto
Born in El Salvador, Luis Carrillos has worked with the Latin American community across Canada as an educator, community organizer, activist and volunteer in community, legal and health service agencies' governance since 1976. From 1994 to 2014 as Youth Program Manager, the thrust of his work has been counselling with youth and families addressing youth gangs, youth and the justice system, youth at risk, and youth mental health issues among others. With a Master's in Education and a Child and Youth Worker diploma, titles of his written work include Identity Politics Among Latino Youths in Toronto; Youth Gangs: To See Them Talk – Is To Hear Them Walk; and HOW TO… 1 and 2 (handbooks to support families and youth). He has collaborated on research with Alan Simmons at York University, presented widely on youth gangs in Toronto, served on multiple community associations in Toronto, and has extensive media exposure.
John Carlaw
Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, Canada
John Carlaw was project lead of York University's Syria Response and Refugee Initiative (2015-April 2018), a refugee resettlement and education project. He is also a doctoral candidate in political science, a graduate research fellow of the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), and a research associate at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University. His dissertation examines the politics and policies of citizenship, immigration, and multiculturalism under Canada's former Conservative government (2006-2015). His work has been published in the Journal of Canadian Studies (2017) and in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' The Harper Record 2008-2015 (2015).
Roxane Caron
University of Montreal, Canada
Roxane Caron is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal. She has extensive fieldwork experience with refugees in camps, particularly in Lebanon. Her research interests focus on the transformations experienced by refugee women in exile, as well as the challenges, strengths, and strategies they put into place. She is also interested in the development of transnational social work practice. Her current work focuses on the migration trajectories of refugees from Syria in the Middle East and Canada (Quebec).
Jessica Carter
Jessica Carter is an undergraduate student at Northwestern University majoring in Political Science and Psychology. She has spent the past year writing her Senior Honors Thesis on what led Kansas and three other states to withdraw from the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program in 2016.
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Wendy Chan is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Her research critically explores the racialized and gendered dimensions of violence against women, immigration enforcement and criminalization of marginalized groups.
Emerimana Daniel Christian
URISE Initiative for Africa, Canada
Emerimana Daniel Christian moved to Kakuma Refugee Camp from Burundi in 2009, and is a graduate from the Regis University. He has vast experience in working with refugee youth, and is the co-founder of the URISE Initiative for Africa, a community organisation that works in the field of youth empowerment. He has worked as the Assistant Supervisor with the Jesuit Refugee Service, and an interpreter with the UNHCR's Resettlement Unit.
Christina Clark-Kazak
University of Ottawa, Canada
Christina Clark-Kazak is Associate Professor, Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa and President, International Association for the Study of Forced Migration. Her research focuses on three areas: age discrimination in migration and development policy; political participation of young people in migration situations; and, interdisciplinary methodology in forced migration, conflict and development.
Gabriele Cloeters
Istanbul Policy Center (Sabanci University-Mercator Foundation Initiative), Turkey
Gabriele Cloeters is a PhD student at the University of Hamburg/ Germany and a Research Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC)/ Turkey. Her dissertation research is entitled "The Perception of Gender-based Violence in Feminist Media Free Spaces in Turkey." Her research was supported by the university's fund for gender equality at the University of Hamburg, where Cloeters held a graduate scholarship in the Department of Turkology. Cloeters is also interested in current issues of migration and asylum policies as well as minority policies in Turkey. As a Mercator-IPC Fellow she focusses on gendered aspects of Syrian migration and prepared an IPC- Policy Brief analyzing the healthcare access for Syrian refugee women in Turkey (Co-authored with Souad Osseiran, In publication) .
Kearney Coupland
Kearney Coupland is a second year PhD student in the Geography Department at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research interests are informed by her training as a landscape architect and explore how people experience and adapt to changing environments in response to conflict and climate change.
Through her research, she hopes to employ the skillsets she has gained in her previous education to recognize support communities mobilize existing adaptive capacities to adapt to the impacts of climate change and facilitate meaningful engagement.
Yuriko Cowper-Smith
University of Guelph, Canada
Yuriko is completing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Guelph. She received her Master of Public and International Affairs from Glendon College, and her Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Ottawa. She has extensive experience working in academic and community-based research. For three years, she has worked at the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute at the University of Guelph in various capacities, and has completed projects for five community partners. She has also held various positions in governmental organizations, such as the Council of the Federation Secretariat in Ottawa, the UK Consulate in Toronto, and the Embassy of Canada in Vietnam.
Jessica Darrow
University of Chicago, USA
Jessica Darrow, Ph.D. is a Lecturer and the Director of Global Social Development Practice Programs at the School of Social Service Administration. Her research focuses on refugee resettlement policy, refugee integration, international social welfare, and implementation of social policies. She has published papers on refugee resettlement organizations in the United States, the State Department's role in resettlement, and related issues.
Gabrielle Désilets
Concordia University, Canada
Dacia Douhaibi
Dacia Douhaibi is a third year doctoral student in the Geography Department at York University, studying the linkages between large scale development, land grabs, forced displacement and process of territorialization. This year, Dacia will be in South Sudan on fieldwork for her dissertation. Her project will identify the current scale of land acquisitions in South Sudan and the nature of the impact of changing land control arrangements on community land use systems. Dacia holds an MA in International Affairs from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology at the University of Victoria. Between these degrees, Dacia also worked on several community development projects in Asia, Central America, and Africa. Currently, Dacia sits on the board of the Canadian based charitable organization, Vulnerable Children's Society, which partners with Ethiopian NGOs to support children through health and educational challenges. Dacia is also the co-chair of the Cetnre for Refugee Studies Student Caucus, works as a research assistant for the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project, and coordinates a mentorship program that links peer mentors across the world with students in the Dadaab refugee camps.
Mohamed Duale
York University, Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER), Canada
Mohamed Duale is a third year PhD student in the Faculty of Education, York University, and a member of the Borderless Higher Education Project in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya. His work in Dadaab allows him to bring in: Ahmed Abdi, Abdikadir Abikar, Abdullahi Yusuf Aden, Arte Dagane, Fatuma Jama, Ochan Leomoi and Okello Oyat, who are all York University Masters of Education students studying in Dadaab, Kenya.
Ayanda Dube
Ayanda Dube came to Montreal as a youth refugee from Zimbabwe as a result of state endorsed violence. His story YUL-MTL — speaks powerfully to his own personal experience of integration. Ayanda was an active participant of Mapping Memories and has spoken to classes and to youth groups about refugee rights and tolerance. He worked for years as a camp counselor at the YMCA and is currently a Master student of Political Science at Concordia University. Ihttp://www.mappingmemories.ca/node/198.html.
Bruno Dupeyron
Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, Canada
Bruno Dupeyron is an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Regina Campus. His major research interests are border and immigration issues, using political sociology and comparative perspectives.
Gracia Dyer
Gracia Dyer Jalea is an oral historian, educator, fundraiser and arts and culture professional. She worked for the Montreal Life Stories Project and co-authored Mapping Memories: Participatory Media, Placed-Based Stories and Refugee Youth. In 2012 she produced the Montreal Life Stories Rencontres, a series of 48 events that took place throughout the city to disseminate the life stories of newcomers and refugees to Quebec. The Rencontres included a year-long exhibit at the Centre d'histoire in Montreal. She is one of the Ward Museum's six founders and the founding executive director of the organization. In less than two years she has built partnerships with community members and over 15 institutional partners across the country.
Claire Ellis is a doctoral student in Policy Studies (Migration Stream) at Ryerson University. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. in Immigration and Settlement Studies from Ryerson University. Claire serves on the Executive Committees of the Emerging Scholars and Practitioners on Migration Issues Network (ESPMI) and the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS). Her research interests include refugee and asylum policy, citizenship and political belonging, education and displacement, critical institutional theory, human rights, and state responses to irregular migration.
Thea Enns
Thea Enns holds a MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford (2017), where she completed her dissertation on the complexities of Canada's Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, focusing specifically on the various degrees of responsibility, authority and participation of multiple levels of governments, and community-based actors. She was a co-researcher on the SSHRC funded project entitled The Social Inclusion & Private Sponsorship of Refugees in Ontario; she is currently a researcher at the Centre for Community Based Research, and is also actively involved in refugee resettlement initiatives in the region of Waterloo.
Veronica Escobar
MA student, Immigration and Settlement Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto
Mariam Eskander
Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, Egypt
Studied political science at the American University in Cairo, then graduated to teach English in a refugee school in Cairo for a year and a half. Worked afterwards for CARE International with Syrian and African refugee SGBV survivors. After deciding that I want to work in refugee assistance and have my own initiative, I went for my master's degree in International Development. Currently working at a local Egyptian NGO that empowers youth and promotes better employment opportunities for Egyptians. However, my passion remain to work someday in empowering refugee and migrant communities through providing education opportunities and capacity building.
Adiba Fannana
Adiba Fannana recently completed an MA in Sociology in the USA. She intends to explore the human rights violation against Rohingyas.
Maya Fennig
An Israeli social worker and human rights activist, Maya Fennig is dedicated to pursuing engaged scholarship that supports the development of culturally responsive mental health services and policies that advance the well-being of refugees and marginalized people. Maya is currently pursuing a PhD at McGill University's School of Social Work under the supervision of Dr. Myriam Denov. Her doctoral research examines the effects of social and cultural factors on Eritrean refugees' mental health with the goal of developing a novel, culturally sensitive adaptation framework in partnership with refugees themselves.
Erika Frydenlund
Old Dominion University, USA
Erika Frydenlund and Jose Padilla are Research Assistant Professors at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) at Old Dominion University who specialize in modeling and simulation. Their work has focused predominately on applications of M&S to understand forced migration issues. Michaela Hynie is a Professor at York University. Susan McGrath is Professor Emerita at York University. They are currently advancing initiatives to bridge the divide between forced migration scholars and computational modelers including simulationists and big data scientists. This workshop represents a part of their initiative to increase the ability of scholars to communicate across disciplines in order to co-create knowledge to advanced forced migration theory, policy, and practice.
Stéphanie Gasana
Stéphanie Gasana is a Rwandan born, Ethiopian bred, Montrealer, based in Toronto. She has a background in communications and is currently working at a international non-profit. She is passionate about community engagement, education and migration issues.
Lorielle Giffin
Lorielle Giffin is a research assistant in the Department of Criminology, Ryerson University. She holds an MA in Criminology and Social Justice from Ryerson University. She presented her research on detention of migrants and on Indigenous justice in Canada in various conferences.
Erin Goheen Glanville
Erin Goheen Glanville, Ph.D. (McMaster University) is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Communication and a Research Associate at the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities at Simon Fraser University. Erin's current research is a knowledge mobilization project on the public discourse of contemporary forced migration dialogues in Canada and is done in partnership with Kinbrace Community Society. She runs community workshops shaped by her doctoral research on refugee fiction as pedagogy and has published chapters on cultural representations of refugees, refugee literary narratives, and diaspora literature in the context of globalization.
Luin Goldring
Luin Goldring is a Professor of Sociology at York University. Her research interests include non-citizenship, citizenship and belonging; social inequality; immigrants and precarious work; and critical migration studies. Her current research examines the multi-level production and negotiations of precarious legal status, the "chutes and ladders" of legal status trajectories, and the long-term implications of precarious legal status for im/migrant incorporation and social inequality. She is co-editor, with Patricia Landolt, of Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizen Precarious Legal Status in Canada (University of Toronto Press).
Paola Gomez
SickMuse, Director, Canada
Paola Gomez is a trained human rights lawyer, community organizer, public speaker, artist facilitator, writer and dreamer. A member of PEN Canada's Writers in Exile and an advocate, Paola is involved in causes such as ending violence against women and forced migration. Her works integrate arts, community engagement and anti-oppressive frameworks. Paola is the co-founder and director of Sick Muse Art Projects. In this role, she has developed an innovative way of integrating conversations about identity, inclusion and community engagement into community art programs. Her work with refugee and newcomer communities have been greatly recognize in Canada, where she arrived as a refugee in 2004. Paola is the recipient of 2008 Amina Malko Award from the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture for her work with refugee women, 2009 Vital People from Toronto Foundation for her community building initiatives, the 2016 Constance E Hamilton, Human Rights Award from the City of Toronto for her leadership in promoting the empowerment of women and the 2018 Champions of Change Award; excellence in the Arts from the Skills for Change.
Odessa Gonzalez Benson
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, USA
Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson is Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Detroit School of Urban Studies and School of Social Work. Her areas of research are: refugee resettlement, refugee/migrant-led organizations, participatory approaches to urban governance with migrants, state-civil society relations, critical policy studies. Dr. Gonzalez Benson pursues transdisciplinary work integrating social welfare and community perspectives with refugee studies, particularly within the context of 'new resettlement destinations' and urban spaces. Her degrees are: MSW from Arizona State University, BA from the University of the Philippines and PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Annie Taccolini is MSW candidate at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Research Assistant with Just Futures: A Global and Transdiciplinary Research Team on Migration, Resettlement and Urban Studies. She is also policy analyst at a local resettlement agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ms Taccolini has a BA from the University of Michigan.
Luann Good Gingrich
Luann Good Gingrich is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Scholar in Residence at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research investigates the interface of social welfare and human services, inequality and diversity, and migration studies. She applies her theoretical and empirical work to the development of approaches to research, social policy and practice that analyse and interrupt the processes and outcomes of social exclusion. She is the author of Out of Place: Social Exclusion and Mennonite Migrants in Canada (2016); and co-editor of Transnational Social Policy: Social Welfare in a World on the Move (2017).
Angelica Hasbon
First year PhD student in the department of Politics at York University.
Graham Hudson
Graham Hudson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at Ryerson University. He researches in the areas of national security, irregular migration, sanctuary city policies, and legal pluralism.Graham is a member of several research teams, including the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society's SSHRC Partnership Grant (Co-Applicant) and a SSHRC Insight Grant on the intersection of security, irregular migration and asylum (Co-Applicant; Prof. Idil Atak, PI). He is also conducting a legal and empirical study of "sanctuary city" policy in Toronto (funded by the RBC Immigrant, Diversity and Inclusion Project), in collaboration with Drs. Idil Atak, Michele Manocchi, and Charity-Ann Hannan. Finally, he is studying the use of secret evidence in Canadian courts with Dr. Daniel Alati (funded by the Foundation for Legal Research).
Ishrat Husain
National Law University, Assam, Guwahati, India
Since 2005, Dr.Ishrat Husain is engaged in teaching. He joined National Law University, Assam in 2015 as an Associate Professor. Criminal Procedure Code, Civil Procedure Code, and Equity and Trusts Law have been his subject of teaching. Dr. Husain is keenly interested in academics. He has written 25 research papers and articles in different Law journals, magazines and National Daily and presented 20 papers in various International and National conferences and seminars.
Jennifer Hyndman
York University, Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), Canada
Jennifer Hyndman is Professor in the Departments of Social Science and Geography, and is Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York. Her research focuses on conflict asylum and related human displacement, humanitarian emergencies, well as refugee resettlement in Canada. Current research projects probe identity and politics in the Toronto Tamil diaspora after 2009; the conundrum of protracted displacement among Somali refugees in Kenya (with W. Giles); and refugee settlement among 'new and few' groups in British Columbia.
Michaela Hynie
Michaela Hynie has a wide-ranging program of community engaged research – in Toronto, and around the world. Her work ranges from broader issues such as newcomers' access to care, the reintegration of prisoners into society, and access to health care for hospital patients without health insurance, to more specific issues such as understanding how to promote the well-being of nail salon workers. The common thread through Hynie's research is using social inclusion to make people's lives better in collaboration with community partners, policymakers, and activist groups.
Department of Sociology, UCLA, USA
Jay is a PhD Candidate in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His dissertation looks at the relationship between urban politics and refugee law and policy in South African cities. He is a fellow at the Academy for African Urban Diversity (AAUD), co-hosted by the Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), Germany and the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), Johannesburg, South Africa. He has received an MA in Forced Migration Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand; an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics; and a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Wilfred Dominic Josue
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Wilfred Dominic Josue is a licensed Integration Teacher by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge / BAMF) working in the city of Rathenow in the State of Brandenburg. He finished his MA in Politics and German Post War History from the Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to coming to Germany he was a German Language Instructor in the Philippines. He finished his Bachelor of Arts major in Political Science from the De La Salle University – Manila. His research interests include Migration, Integration, Civic Education and social engagement of Migrants, German and European Post War History, Politics & Foreign Relations among others.
Liliana Jubilut
Universidade Catolica de Santos, Post-Graduate Program in Law, Brazil
Liliana Lyra Jubilut has a PhD and a Master in International Law by Universidade de São Paulo and an LLM in International Legal Studies by NYU School of Law. She was Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School and Visiting Fellow at Refugee Law Initiative — University of London. She is a Professor at the Post-graduate Program in Law of Universidade Católica de Santos, where she coordinates the Research Group "Direitos Humanos e Vulnerabilidades" (Human Rights and Vulnerabilities), and has been a part of the coordination of the UNHCR Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair since 2013. She is a Member of the IOM Migration Research Leaders' Syndicate and has been working with refugee issues since 1999.
Isaac Kalule
Kennedy House Youth Services, Canada
Isaac Kalule (he/him) is a gay newcomer from Uganda. Soon after his arrival in Canada he lived in Kennedy House youth shelter for three months. Isaac utilizes his lived experiences of homelessness, trauma and depression to be empathetic and to advocate for homeless youth. He is very creative; he has produced video clips and has presented at numerous forums. While still waiting for his refugee claim hearing, he is working as a peer group mentor at Kennedy Youth shelter in Toronto.
Ayşe Seyyide Kaptaner
Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
Ayşe Seyyide Kaptaner is a PhD student in the Department of Management at University of London, Birkbeck College. She did her MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management at Imperial College London. She holds a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. Her PhD research is about refugee entrepreneurship programmes in European capitals, namely in London, Berlin and Amsterdam. She has volunteered in several refugee organisations in Istanbul and London. She is part of Schoolx, an education project for refugees and other disadvantaged communities, incubated by Imperial College Enterprise Lab.
Aryan Karimi
University of Alberta, Canada
I am a qualitative researcher interested in studying the links between sexuality and gender; race and ethnicity; and refugee and migration among ethnic minorities such as Iranians, Somalis, and Sub-Saharans in Canada, Western Europe, and the Middle-East.
Kanwal Khokhar
Kanwal Khokhar is pursuing a Master's degree in Criminal and Social Justice at Ryerson University. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Criminology, with distinction, from Ryerson University. Kanwal's research interests include immigration and human rights related topics. Specifically, she is interested in how changes in immigration policies in the United States influence Canada and immigration related discourse globally.
Caroline Kihato
University of Johannesburg, School of Architecture, South Africa
Dr. Caroline Wanjiku Kihato is the Urban Policy Program Director for WIEGO, a Visiting Associate Professor at Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, and a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC. Her research and teaching interests are migration, gender, governance, and urbanization in the global South. She has published widely on academic and popular platforms. She is the author of Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Life in an in-between City (Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of Urban Diversity: Space, Culture and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide (Johns Hopkins).
Ranjith Kulatilake
Ranjith Kulatilake (he/him) is a gay immigrant from Sri Lanka. He left a university teaching career in architecture because of his sexuality. A homophobic incident caused him to leave his doctoral studies at a university in Toronto. While combating depression, he studied counselling and reinvented himself to work with LGBTIQ+ newcomers at a community health centre in Toronto. For this work, Ranjith received the 2014 United Way Toronto Award for Innovation and Creativity. He is currently a student of social work, focusing on LGBTIQ+ newcomer resettlement.
Ben Kuo
University of Windsor, Psychology, Canada
Dr. Ben C. H. Kuo is a Taiwanese-born and Canada/U.S.-educated counseling psychologist. He is currently a Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Windsor, Canada. He is a registered and practicing psychologist in Ontario and has over 25 years of clinical experience working and treating diverse clients, including international students, immigrants, refugees, racial/ethnic minorities and non-minority individuals in North America and Asia. Dr. Kuo's research is in cross-cultural psychology and multicultural counseling/psychotherapy. He has published research on acculturation, cultural stress and coping, professional help-seeking attitude and behaviours, and cultural adjustment and mental health issues among immigrants, refugees, and culturally-diverse populations.
Irmak Kurtulmuş
Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants, Turkey
I have majored in Political Science and International Relations in Boğaziçi University; and now, I am an M.A. candidate of Turkish Studies Program in Sabancı University. My professional experience includes as a reporter in NTV for 4 months; as a project assistant at Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) for 4 months; and as a media planner for a year in Vivaki media agency; as a teaching assistant in Sabancı University for 2 years, as a research assistant in Okan University for 8 months. Currently, I am working as 'Protection Officer' of UNHCR funded project in ASAM that has been the largest civil society in Turkey.
Shauna Labman
University of Manitoba, Faculty of Law, Canada
Dr. Shauna Labman is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba. She writes and speaks extensively on refugee law, resettlement and private sponsorship with a focus on the intersection of international rights, responsibility and obligation in refugee protection. Professor Labman co-founded the Migration Law Research Cluster housed at the University of Manitoba and previously worked as a consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi, the Canadian Embassy in Beijing and the Law Commission of Canada. Current projects and collaborations focus on building relationships between indigenous and newcomer groups, refugee parent perspectives on Canadian education, impact of private refugee sponsorship on sponsors and the secondary migration of resettled refugees.
Laxman Lamichhane
Advocate/Researcher, Nepal
Laxman Lamichhane is an Advocate from Nepal. He is interested in the field of forced migration, human rights, refugee rights, and peace building. He has been advocating for the just refugee regime in Nepal. He has attended many national, regional and international conferences relating to human rights, refugee rights and forced migration. He is also keenly interested in refugee politics and its impact on overall forced migration regime.
Patricia Landolt
University of Toronto, Scarborough College, Canada
Patricia Landolt is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her work examines processes of differential inclusion associated with global migration. She has conducted research on Salvadoran transnational migration, Latin American refugee political incorporation, racialized workers' experiences of precarious work and income security, and the ways these intersect with precarious legal status. Her current research focuses on patchwork- access to schooling for precarious legal status students in two Toronto neighbourhoods. It is part of a broader conceptual interest in probation and the conditionality of noncitizenship.
Paulina Larreategui
University of Regina, Canadá
Paulina Larreátegui is an Ecuadorian lawyer with an extensive working experience with refugees and forced migration in her country. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Regina.
Robert Larruina
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Robert Larruina is a PhD researcher and lecturer in the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He received a bachelor's degree in Social Communication Sciences from the Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay, and a master's degree in Organizational Anthropology from VU Amsterdam.
Since 2011, he is studying the refugee reception and integration in the Netherlands and the role that civil society, governmental organizations and self-organized refugees play in these processes. So, which are each other's expectations and how they interact in the complex world of policy making and migration. Currently, he focusing on the lessons learnt from the 2015-2017 (refugee crisis) period & possible spaces for multi-stakeholders' collaborative governance, as a resilient and sustainable model for migrant reception and integration. In these lines, he is doing research on the current Refugee Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (2018-2019) in the Netherlands.
Sangyoo Lee
Sangyoo Lee is a Ph.D. student in the School of Social Work at York University. Her research interests span critical multiculturalism, settler colonialism, and Indigenous-settler solidarity.
Isabelle Lemay
Isabelle Lemay is currently completing her M.A. in Political Science (Development Studies Option) at McGill University. Her thesis focuses on the role of representations of refugees in influencing policy-making towards openness. She also conducted research on forced migration issues as a research assistant to Professor Megan Bradley during the year 2017-2018. Ms. Lemay was also a teaching assistant for a course on the politics of the international refugee regime during the fall of 2018. She holds a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master's Program) for the year 2018-2019.
Jaime Lenet
Jaime Lenet is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at McGill University, a hospital social worker in Ottawa, and a mother to two young children. Her doctoral research examines the experiences of former refugee claimants who have been removed from Canada. She holds an MSW, an MA in International Affairs and a BA in Political Studies and History. Jaime has previously taught courses in the Schools of Social Work at McGill and Carleton University.
Jamie Liew
University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law (Common Law Section), Canada
Jamie Chai Yun Liew is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2006 and has appeared at the Immigration and Refugee Board, the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Canada. She has also appeared in front of the House of Commons and Senate Standing Committees on immigration and refugee issues. Her research focuses on how the law marginalizes migrants and has written about legal challenges and barriers for LGBTQ refugee claimants, women claiming refugee protection based on gender, migrants with mental illness and stateless persons. She is the co-author of "Immigration Law" (with Donald Galloway) published by Irwin Law. Her current research looks at legal barriers for stateless persons to obtain citizenship in Canada and Malaysia.
Marilena Liguori
Université de Montréal, Canada
1) Marilena Liguori is a graduate student in the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal. She has over ten years of research experience looking at the re-settlement and integration experiences of refugees in Quebec. She is the coordinator of a research project on the migration trajectories of refugees from Syria in the Middle East and Quebec.
Anita Lumbus
Curtin University, Australia
Anita Lumbus is a PhD candidate, researcher and sessional tutor at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Her research interests include participatory research which seeks to address issues of social justice, including the rights of people seeking asylum and refugees in Australia. Anita also has a Master of Human Rights Practice degree, and Post Graduate Certificates in Social Research and Evaluation and in Professional Writing. She has worked extensively in the fields of policy, research and program evaluation.
Alexandra Lund-Murray
James (Thuch) Madhier
James (Thuch) Madhier is originally from South Sudan, where he lived until age 15 before relocating to a Refugee Camp in northern Kenya during the Sudanese civil war. He then came to the University of Toronto in 2014 through the World University Service of Canada's Refugee Sponsorship Program where he also founded Rainmaker Enterprise. James has been highly involved in international cooperation and transformative social justice work, notably with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Alliance of Civilization (UNAOC), and European Union.
Tina Magazzini
Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Research, European University Institute,
Tina Magazzini is currently based at UNESCO's Regional Office for Southern Africa (Social and Human Science unit) in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she focuses on knowledge-production on migration and inclusion in the Southern African region. She holds a BA in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Florence, Italy, and a MA in International Relations from the City College of New York. She carried out her PhD as a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher at the University of Deusto, with a secondment at the University of Sussex, in the framework of the INTEGRIM programme.
Jay Marlowe
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Jay Marlowe is an associate professor of social work at the University of Auckland. He is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow funded by the Royal Society New Zealand and has more than 60 publications related to forced migration, refugee settlement, transnational livelihoods and disaster risk reduction. He has a book published with Routledge (2018) entitled: Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement.
Amna Masood
Amna Masood, Vice Chair of the WUSC York University Keele Campus Chapter. She is in her last year at York University, studying Political Science with a specialization in Public Policy and Administration. She has served for three years on the WUSC committee, including as an Administrative Officer and Student Refugee Coordinator (SRP).
Joseph Mbalaka
I am a student at the University of South Africa.
Susan McGrath
Susan McGrath C.M., is Professor Emerita at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and a Member of the Order of Canada. Professor McGrath is a co-PI of the SyRIA.lth study, and conducts research on refugee resettlement and community development.
Liz Miller
Concordia University, Communication Studies, Canada
Elizabeth (Liz ) Miller is a documentary maker and professor who uses collaboration and interactivity as a way to connect personal stories to larger timely social issues. Her films/educational campaigns on timely issues such as refugee integration and rights (Mapping Memories), climate migration and adaptation (The Shore Line) gender rights (En la Casa), water privatization (The Water Front) & environmental justice (Hands On) have won international awards, been integrated into educational curricula and influenced decision makers. Years of experience in community media and a background in political economics, electronic media art, and Latin American studies fuel her ongoing explorations of new media as art, advocacy, and as a catalyst for critical pedagogies. Liz is a Full Professor in Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal where she teaches courses in media production and research-creation.
Carleton University, Political Science, Canada
James Milner has been a researcher, practitioner and policy advisor on issues relating to the global refugee regime, global refugee policy and the politics of asylum in the global South. In recent years, he has undertaken field research in Burundi, Guinea, Kenya, India, Tanzania and Thailand, and has presented research findings to stakeholders in New York, Geneva, London, Ottawa, Bangkok, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and elsewhere. He has worked as a Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India, Cameroon, Guinea and its Geneva Headquarters. He is currently Project Director for LERRN: The Local Engagement Refugee Research Network, a SSHRC-funded 7-year collaboration between academic and NGO partners in Canada, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Tanzania and elsewhere.
Rodziana Mohamed Razali
Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University, Canada
Dr. Rodziana Mohamed Razali is a senior lecturer at the Islamic Science University of Malaysia and an Advocate and Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya (Non-practicing). She was previously in the Malaysian Judicial and Legal Service and later studied for her Masters of Laws at the University of Melbourne. She earned her PhD from the National University of Malaysia in 2017. Her thesis is entitled "Protection against Statelessness at Birth: International and Domestic Legal Frameworks of ASEAN Member States with a Special Case Study on Kota Kinabalu, Sabah". Currently she is attached to the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University (Sep 2018-June 2019) as a Steinberg Post-Doctoral Fellow in International Migration Law.
Morsaline Mojid
University of Hawaii at Manoa, United States
I'm a Ph.D student in the University of Hawaii in the Department of Sociology. To pursue Ph.D degree, I'm currently in the study leave as an Assistant Professor in the Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (AUST). I'm developing my research project on Rohingya refugee settlement and repatriation process in Bangladesh.
Petra Molnar
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Canada
Petra Molnar is a lawyer in Toronto, Canada and an alumna of the IHRP (Juris Doctor 2016). She has worked on forced migration and refugee issues since 2008 as a settlement worker, researcher, and lawyer. Petra regularly shares her work domestically and internationally and writes about immigration detention, health and human rights, gender-based violence, and the politics of refugee, immigration, and international law. She is currently exploring the impacts of automated-decision making and artificial intelligence in Canada's immigration and refugee system on human rights, in a joint project with The Citizen Lab.
A graduate student of York Development Studies, Travis' current research concerns the emergence of Naples, Italy as a sanctuary city for unauthorized migrants. He is interested in exploring the political inclusion of migrants as irregular citizens in the context of the city.
Stefanie Morris
University of Ottawa, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Canada
Stéfanie Morris is a masters candidate at the Universitiy of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Her research interests include immigration, refugee and asylum law, policy and programs. She received her Bachelor's in Sociocultural Anthropology at Brigham Young University in 2016. She will be copresenting with Patti Lenard. Patti Tamara Lenard is Associate Professor of Ethics in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. She is the author of Trust, Democracy and Multicultural Challenges (Penn State, 2012). Her current research focuses on the moral questions raised by migration across borders in an era of terrorism, especially as it pertains to refugees and irregularly present migrants, trust and social cohesion, and democratic theory more generally.
Delphine Nakache
University of Ottawa, School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS), Canada
Delphine Nakache is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa (Canada). She teaches courses in the areas of public international law, immigration and refugee law and human rights law. She has researched and published on issues related to the human rights and security-based implications of migration, citizenship and refugee laws and policies, both in Europe and Canada.
Anh Ngo
Anh Ngo's main areas of scholarship and research focus on the experiences of immigrants and refugees in Canada, at both the individual and community level; social policy as knowledge production and its effects on the lived experiences of individuals and groups; critical multiculturalism and critical refugee studies; and, social change through community action and engaged scholarship.
Keith Nicholson
Keith Nicholson is a 2019 graduate of Mount Allison University, with an B.A. Honours degree in International Relations, with minors in French and Anthropology. He is from Florida, in the United States. He intends to continue his studies in graduate school after a year of interning in the area of social justice.
Maissam Nimer
Sabanci University, Turkey
Maissam Nimer is a sociologist working in the fields of migration, education, language, and social and gender inequalities. She obtained a PhD in sociology at Paris Saclay University in July 2016. In her thesis, she looked at the mechanisms of social and cultural selection that explain the inequality of access to higher education in Lebanon. Nimer's current work at Koç University, Istanbul, deals with the integration of Syrian refugee youth in Turkey. She is the recipient of a one-year Koç University Seed Grant. She is also a committee member of the "Axe Migrations et Mobilités" at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies, Istanbul (AMiMo, IFEA). Nimer teaches courses on the sociology of education and sociology of family at Galatasaray University in Turkey. Maissam holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and BS from the American University of Beirut.
Denis Njoki
Canadian Countil for Refugees, Canada
Dennis Njoki is a member of the FCJ Youth Network–a group of newcomer youth based here in Toronto. Since arriving in Canada, Dennis has been advocating for the rights of newcomer youth from a youth engagement perspective. In 2017, he had the opportunity to attend the Equitas training on Human Rights education and leading community Action projects. Dennis is currently one of the youth leaders for the Newcomer Youth Civic Engagement Project lead by the Canadian Council for Refugees.
Chizuru Nobe-Ghelani
Chizuru Nobe-Ghelani is a PhD student at the School of Social Work, York University.
Anna Oda
Refugee Integration and Long-Term Health Outcomes in Canada, York University, Canada
Anna Oda is Project Coordinator of Refugee Integration and Long-Term Health Outcomes in Canada based at York University.
Rosemary Okoth
Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention, Canada
Rosemary Okoth (she/her) is an out and proud lesbian woman from Kenya and now a refugee claimant living in Toronto. She is interested in social anthropology. She has worked in organizations dealing with HIV/AIDS, women and girls in Kenya and has presented at different venues. Rosemary is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Development Anthropology. She aspires to be a human rights advocate. Rosemary likes reading and travelling, and enjoys baking pastries. She is a big soccer fan who supports Manchester City FC.
Naima Osman
Naima Osman is a MSc candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Her graduate work is in medical anthropology. Naima seeks to understand how social, cultural, political and economic factors influence health and well-being. Her current thesis research follows Somali refugees with chronic illness as they move from a protracted refugee camp in Kenya to resettlement in Canada. Her familiarity with the language, culture and many years working in Canada with refugees enable a particularly fine-grained analysis of refugee health. She recently returned from Kenya after having completed 4 months of fieldwork.
Myriam Ouellet
Myriam Ouellet est candidate au doctorat en sciences géographiques au département de géographie de l'Université York. Elle travaille actuellement sur l'influence de la classe sociale sur les trajectoires migratoires de réfugiés syriens au Moyen-Orient.
Sunday Israel Oyebamiji
University of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa
Oyebamiji, S.I. is a researcher and teacher; holds B.A. [Hons.] and M.A. degrees in History and Strategic Studies from the University of Lagos in 2006 and 2009 respectively. Currently, his thesis is under examination, Ph.D. in International Relations at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Member of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA). His intellectual horizon has been broadened by his flair for writing and publication, in addition to participation in a number of outstanding conferences and workshops. His lecturing experience at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and University of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa has further enhanced his scholarly qualities.
Gbadebo Gbemisola Oyewo
Redeemers University/Independent Researcher, Nigeria
Umoh Samuel Uwem is a PhD scholar, lecturer, Department of History, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa .He is also a tutor at the Department of cultural heritage. He is also a field researcher for Tourism Kwazulu-Natal. His areas of interest oral history, culture, tourism, migration and higher education.
Adetola Elizabeth Oyewo
University of KwaZulu-Ntal, South Africa
Zehra Melike Palta
University of Toronto, Canada
I am a PhD student at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. I aim to understand how non-sponsored refugees perceive, live and resist integration to Canada through using participatory action research methods. My main focus is to explore how they reflect on their lived experiences, in particular their language learning journey, to identify the challenges and areas of need. I do also volunteer at various community organizations to provide advice and carry out workshops to facilitate the transition of refugees to a new life in Canada.
Madeleine Pattis
Anke Patzelt
University of Ottawa, Sociology and Anthropology, Canada
Elke Winter is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa, a Fellow at the University of Konstanz' Institute for Advanced Study "The Cultural Foundations of Integration" (in 2017-2019), and the research director of the thematic focus Migration, Ethnic Pluralism and Citizenship at the Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities (CIRCEM). Anke is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Ottawa. Anke's dissertation research focuses on the mobility, integration and settlement patterns of highly-skilled migrants and the "mobile elites". Previously, Anke graduated from Malmö University with an MA in International Migration and Ethnic Relations. Her master thesis was awarded the German-Canadian Studies Master's Thesis Prize of the University of Winnipeg in 2014. She obtained her BA in Cultural and Social Anthropology and Scandinavian Studies from the University of Münster. Anke has researched and published on German immigrants in Canada, concepts of identity construction, home and belonging, citizenship in Germany and Canada, the media discourses in Germany and Canada surrounding the recent "refugee crisis", as well as the vulnerabilities of aging migrants.
Kerith Paul
Kerith Paul has worked in the non-profit and settlement sector for over 10 years. Prior to her involvement with RULSC, Kerith worked in a hospitality skills training program at the YMCA GTA, coordinated an Ontario program supporting Government-Assisted Refugees at the YMCA GTA, and then supported law school graduates, many internationally trained, in an innovative job placement program at Ryerson University. Kerith holds a Masters in Immigration & Settlement Studies from Ryerson University ('09) and in 2017 was awarded the Ryerson Make Your Mark Award for her work with the RULSC pan-university private sponsorship initiative. Kerith is also passionate about the outdoors and indigenous issues in Canada.
Madison Pearlman
Madison Pearlman highlights the grassroots, multi-faith efforts to create and maintain a fit-for-Winnipeg Private Sponsorship Model called 'Operation Ezra.' As a law student, she previously worked with the organizers and wrote an Op-Ed in the Winnipeg Free Press on the importance of private sponsorship and Operation Ezra, Madison has become familiar with the work of this group. She spent the summer after her first year in law school working with Dr. Shauna Labman on various private sponsorship research projects, co-authoring a journal article comparing and analyzing Canadian private sponsorship models, including the recent Blended Visa Officer Referred program. Madison holds a masters in refugee studies, which has provided her with a multidisciplinary background in refugee and immigration law and policy.
Vince Pietropaolo
COSTI Immigrant Services, Family and Mental Health Services, Canada
Vince Pietropaolo, M.A. is the General Manager of Family and Mental Health Services at COSTI Immigrant Services, and also oversees the Refugee Mental Health Services. Vince works in program development and implementation in the areas of mental health, domestic violence, and problem gambling as well as provides culturally responsive counselling to individual clients.
Geraldine Polanco
McMaster University, Canada
Geraldina Polanco is an Assistant Professor of Labour Studies and Sociology at McMaster University. Prior to joining McMaster, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at York University's Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean. An expert in the fields of migration and work, her scholarship has contributed to knowledge in the areas of citizenship studies, work and employment, globalization, and gender and ethnic relations. She has published in venues like Third World Quarterly (2016), Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (2017), and Journal of International Migration and Integration (2016).
Brenda Polar
Brenda Polar is a PhD student at the School of Social Work, York University.
Morgan Poteet
Morgan Poteet's primary research focuses on belonging for Central American origin youth in Toronto. This work is published in the Journal of International Migration and Integration (JIMI) and Canadian Ethnic Studies (CES). His current research, funded by a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, is a retrospective study of the subjective experiences of integration, belonging and exclusion of the 1.5 and 2nd generation (children of) Central American immigrants and refugees in Toronto. Poteet is Associate Professor in Sociology at Mt. Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he teaches courses on global migration, critical border studies, human rights, refugee studies, youth criminalization, and citizenship. He is past president of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS), currently Director at Large on the CARFMS Executive, a Research Associate at the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), and an Adjunct Faculty in the Sociology Graduate Program at York University in Toronto
Fabio Martinez Serrano Pucci
Federal University of São Carlos, Brasil
I have both a Degree and Master's Degree in Social Science from Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), granted by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). From 2010 to 2013, I carried out a research project into xenophobia and prejudice against Bolivians in São Paulo. From 2014 to 2016 I did some research on housing conditions and access to social policies of Bolivians in São Paulo. Nowadays, I am doing a Ph.D. Course in Sociology, at Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), granted by FAPESP. In this project, I am researching the resettlement of Syrian refugees in São Paulo (Brazil).
Kashmala Qasim
Kashmala Qasim completed her undergraduate studies in Psychology from the University of Toronto and completed a Masters in Neuroscience from McMaster University. Kashmala has been a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Islamic Online University, and has also received Level 1 Pastoral Counselling training from the University of Toronto. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. at York University in Social Psychology. Kashmala's research interests include Socio-cultural challenges faced by the Muslim community in accessing mental health care, coping mechanisms used by Syrian refugees and developing an Islamic model of psychotherapy.
Mohammad Azizur Rahman
University of Manitoba, Canada
Aziz Rahman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. His professional background includes research, consulting and community work. His dissertation thesis intends to explore refugees' labor market outcomes and the factors associated with the economic integration of refugees in Canada.
Anna Rannou
Covenant College / University of Kentucky, USA
I am a professor in the Departments of Political Science, Economics and Community Development at Covenant College. My research focuses on the politicization of refugee issues in both developing and developed host states. I have particular interest in examining hate crimes and discourses of exclusion in relation to refugees and asylum seekers across diverse political and settlement contexts. I have completed fellowships at the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre and the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa Ethiopia.
Alexander Ray
SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom
Lex is a PhD candidate in International Development at SOAS, University of London, funded through a studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. He holds an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge and a BA (Hons) in Politics with International Relations from the University of York, where he graduated with a starred first. His research interests focus on the aidnography of refugee protection and assistance, the governance of forced migration, the interaction between political scales, and the role of everyday practices in constructing and operating governance systems.
Sean Rehaag
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada
Sean Rehaag is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he specializes in immigration and refugee law, human rights and legal process. He frequently contributes to public debates about immigration and refugee law, and he engages in law reform efforts in these areas. His academic research focuses on empirical studies of immigration and refugee law decision-making processes. He currently holds an SSHRC grant involving quantitative research using large data-sets to study extra-legal factors that influence outcomes in Canadian refugee adjudication. He is also pursuing research using experiments to help better understand how refugee adjudications make credibility assessments.
Kristen Lloyd is a JD student at Osgoode Hall Law School. During her legal studies, she was a caseworker in the Immigration Division at Parkdale Community Legal Services.
Old Dominion University, United States
Monica Reyes is a wife, mother, educator, and scholar. She lectures in the Writing & Language Studies department at The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. She is also a PhD candidate with Old Dominion University's English Studies program where her dissertation focuses on how people seeking asylum compose their narratives within liminal spaces on the U.S./ Mexico border. Her research interests include: literary and cultural rhetorics of travel narratives; postcolonialism; displacement studies; and rhetorical ecology research methods. Her work on travel writing has been featured in Watchung Review (2017), Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (2015), and is forthcoming in the anthology, Travelln' Mama: Mothers, Mothering and Travel (2019).
Myriam Richard
School of social work-Université de Montréal, Canada
Myriam Richard is a M.S.W candidate at the School of Social Work at Université de Montréal. She is involved in the field of immigration, refuge and intercultural relations as a research agent, trainer and community social worker in academia and community-based organizations. She is interested in refugee people's pathways in Canada and internationally from a transnational feminist perspective, and she is also devoted to participatory action research methods as well as inclusive social intervention practices.
Roxane Caron is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at Université de Montréal. She is interested in refugee experiences, especially the realities of women. She is currently the principal investigator of two research projects aimed at better understanding the migratory journey of Syrian refugees from Syria to Canada in a transnational and intersectional perspective. Her work is anchored in a qualitative approach, especially in ethnographic approaches as well as in postcolonial and intersectional realities.
Joseph Rikhof
Dr. Joseph Rikhof is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law (Common Law), University of Ottawa. He is recently retired from Justice Canada's Crime Against Humanity and War Crimes Unit. He is one of the foremost authorities in the area of exclusion under Article 1F of the 1951 Convention and he has published extensively in the field of international refugee law.
Genevieve Ritchie
Genevieve Ritchie has worked as a community educator and campaign organizer in both Australia and Canada. She is currently working toward a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development at OISE/the University of Toronto. Her research investigates the relations that inform and constitute migration, race, gender, the politics of youth, community resistance, and education for activism.
Glenda Santana de Andrade
CRESPPA-GTM (Université Paris 8)/ IC Migrations, France
Glenda Santana de Andrade is a PhD candidate in Sociology, attached to the Sociological and Political Research Center of Paris (Université Paris 8). Her research focuses on refugees, migration, citizenship, collective action and survival strategies, with a geographical focus on Middle East. In addition, she holds a master's degree in Political Science from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Université Paris 1) and a master's degree in International Politics – IPE from the University of Manchester. She is the author of What kind of citizenship in refugee camps? Palestinians in Lebanon (Quelle citoyenneté dans les camps de réfugiés ? Les Palestiniens au Liban, Paris, l'Harmattan, 2016).
Mary Rose Geraldine Sarausad
Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
I am based in Thailand and work as a lecturer at the Asian Institute of Technology for more than 10 years. My research experience has evolved from several years of teaching and postgraduate research training in two of the most renowned institutes in Southeast Asia, focusing mainly on investigating trends in international migration within the Southeast Asian region and analyzing the experiences of migrants, particularly on Filipinos and Myanmar migrants in Thailand. My research areas of interest are international migration, labour market, population mobility, human rights and gender issues, and social protection. My doctoral research on contemporary Filipino migration in Thailand is a pioneering work, which highlighted the less-explored Philippines-Thailand migration system that has evolved for several decades and the persistence of unauthorized migration within the cities and at the borders of Thailand. My research activities and participation in international conferences and summer programs have provided me with a deeper knowledge of various issues, current discourses and analytical approaches. Moreover, I have presented research papers at several international conferences in Europe and Asia with funding support. My recent paper on irregular migrant workers in Thailand was presented in Geneva, Switzerland in July, 2015, and I was awarded the RDW Prize 2015 for Best Paper by a junior researcher. I have several publications online and in peer-reviewed journals.
Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University
Amanda Siino
York University (Alumni), Canada
Amanda recently completed her MA in Development Studies at York University, with a diploma in Refugee Studies. Her SSHRC-funded research is based in her fieldwork with displaced independent Eritrean youth in Cairo from May to August 2017, focusing on their livelihood strategies and agentic capabilities amidst their vulnerable situation. Prior to her MA, she worked as a Volunteer Legal Advisor, and in the Unaccompanied Youth Bridging Program, at Saint Andrew's Refugee Services from February to July 2016. Since completing her MA in June 2018, she has been an International Youth Fellow with the Aga Khan Foundation, based in Cairo.
Stephanie Silverman
Stephanie Silverman is a migration researcher and educator working at the intersections of law, society, ethics, and policy. She has experience working for and with governments, universities, front-line workers, and migrant community groups. Stephanie Silverman's sociolegal research on immigration enforcement focuses on detention practices in Canada, the US, and the UK. She holds a DPhil from Oxford, and two SSHRC grants and is also a partner at Thinking Forward: https://www.thinkingforwardnetwork.org/
James Simeon
York University, Toronto, Canada, Canada
Dr. James C. Simeon is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration and the Head of McLaughlin College, York University. He is a member of the Executive of CARFMS. His research is on international refugee law and practice and he has published widely on this topic. His latest co-edited book is "The Criminalization of Migration: Context and Consequences" (MQUP, 2018)
Gustavo Simões
UFRR – Universidade Federal de Roraima, Brasil
Professor of the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) in International Relations and Refugee Studies. PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Brasília. Master in International Relations from the University of Brasília. Bachelor at Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio. Coordinator of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair at the Federal University of Roraima. Member of the Editorial Board of the Cosmopolitan Law Journal (UERJ) and the Journal of International Studies (UEPB). Professor in the areas of Public International Law, Human Rights and International Relations (Contemporary International Relations and History of International Relations). Has experience in issues related to refuge and international migration, and has published articles, books, chapters of books and other works on this subject.Coordinates and participates in research and study groups related to international migration, particularly on the processes of integrating refugees into urban centers. Former Consultant of IPEA and the UNDP in the subject of Migration and Refuge.
Amy Soberano
Access Alliance, Canada
Amy Soberano is a Counsellor Therapist at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services. Amy has a Master's of Social Work from the University of Toronto. Stemming from her education she developed a passion for working with newcomer populations, particularly youth and has worked on several research projects in this area.
Rosa Solorzano
Canadian Council for Refugees, Canada
CCR Youth Network Core Group Co-chair
Matthew Stevens
Lessons Learned Simulations and Training, Canada
Matthew Stevens has worked with refugees and migrants in the Middle East, South America, and North America since 2008. Most recently, he served as a Project Director of the JRS Higher Education Project in Amman, Jordan, the Country Director of JRS Jordan, and as a consultant on Higher Education Programming with JRS MENA. Matthew's academic interests focus on engagement with multiple perspectives in situations of displacement, communication between humanitarian organizations and refugee groups, and recognizing agency of people who are refugees. Since returning to Canada and establishing Lessons Learned, Matthew has become an expert in simulation-based learning methodologies to promote empathy and refine participants' conceptualizations of complex systems.
Lessons Learned is currently exploring the possibility of co-facilitation of this and other training events with individuals who have come to Canada via WUSC or other resettlement programs. However, the availability of a co-facilitator has not yet been confirmed.
Stephanie Stobbe
Menno Simons College (a College of CMU), located at the University of Winnipeg, Canada
Stephanie Stobbe, an Associate Professor in Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College (a College of CMU) at the University of Winnipeg, is a leading expert on Southeast Asian processes of dispute resolution. As an active educator, trainer, and ADR practitioner, she has worked and conducted research in Canada, United States, South America, Europe, India, Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Her recent books include, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Laos: Perspective for Today's World (2015) and Conflict Resolution in Asia: Mediation and Other Cultural Models (2018). In 2016, Stephanie chaired CARFMS 9th Annual Conference on Freedom of Movement of refugees and forced migrants that brought over 350 participants from over 20 countries. Currently, she serves as Lexington Publishing Series Book Editor for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Asia.
Annie Taccolini Panaggio
The University of Michigan, USA
Annie Taccolini Panaggio works within both refugee and Unaccompanied Children systems as a policy officer and critic. She currently works for Bethany Christian Services' Refugee and Immigrant foster care program, as well as alongside Dr. Gonzalez Benson on research through the University of Michigan's School of Social work.
Dina Taha
Dina Taha is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at York University. Her research interests include Critical Forced Migration and Refugee discourses, Postcolonial Feminism, Gender in the Middle East, Victimhood and victimization, Refugee agency and survival strategies. Her dissertation explores Female Syrian Refugees survival mechanisms in Egypt.
Diana Thomaz
Diana Thomazis a PhD candidate (ABD) at the Basillie School of International Affairs. Her research focuses on the presence of international migrants and asylum-seekers in squatted abandoned buildings in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, and in their participation in the city's housing social movements.
Sandra Trebunia
University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Sandra Trebunia is a final-year PhD Social Work student at the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. Sandra's research examines refugee women's experiences of settlement in Sao Paulo. She is particularly interested in exploring the potential of social work and social movements to support women during settlement in urban areas in a way that is sensitive to gender and culture and promotes their agency. Her research interests include: integration theories, feminist theories, agency, empowerment, postcoloniality and human rights. Before studying at Lincoln, Sandra worked as social worker in refugee camps in Poland and Belgium and volunteered in humanitarian project in Palestine.
Jeanique Tucker
I am a PhD in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta and my primary areas of study are Political Theory and Comparative Politics. In 2017 I completed my Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Victoria. My thesis, "Moralizing Violence" focused on institutional violence trained on black and brown bodies. I was able to consider the accounts of refugees confined to camps and the kinds of structures facilitating, even encouraging, human suffering. My PhD research builds on this work but focuses on the structures and processes capable of relieving some of this suffering.
Samuel Umoh
Samuel Uwem Umoh is a lecturer, Department of History, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. He is also a tutor at the Department of cultural heritage and a field researcher for Tourism Kwazulu-Natal. He is PhD Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His areas of interest are oral history, political elites, culture, tourism, migration and higher education. Samuel has published numerous articles, chapters and co-authored books.
Luna Vives
Luna Vives is an assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Montreal. Her research focuses on the reinforcement of the Southern European border and the migration of unaccompanied migrant children.
Lorne Waldman
Lorne Waldman (OC) is one of Canada's most influential legal counsel and an expert in immigration and refugee. He was the founding President of the Canadian Association Refugee Lawyers (CARL) and has represented clients at all instances of the refugee determination system including the Supreme Court of Canada. He has been the counsel of record on many famous Canadian court cases.
Nancy Weisman
Immigration and Refugee Board, Canada
Nancy Weisman is a Senior Legal Counsel at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. She has taught refugee law in various forums including at York University, where she earned her LLB at Osgoode Hall Law School. She has a number legal scholarly articles and book chapters on Canadian refugee law to her credit and has presented at CARFMS Annual Conferences on many occasions.
Kira Williams
Wilfrid Laurier University, Geography and Environmental Studies, Canada
Kira Williams is a research associate at University of Waterloo, instructor and researcher in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, lecturer at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and employee for the International Migration Research Centre. Their research focuses on international migration, global governance, and analytical methodology. Kira recently completed and defended their PhD dissertation, which explored how states reconfigured spaces at sea to manage the movement of people and shift borders in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Their supervisor was Dr. Alison Mountz.
Katya Yefimova
University of Washington, United States
Katya is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington Information School. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology, social inclusion and design. She works with organizations to develop better programs for immigrant and refugee communities in Seattle, WA.
Julie Young
University of Lethbridge, Geography, Canada
Dr. Julie E.E. Young is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies and Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She holds a doctorate in Geography and a Graduate Diploma in Refugee and Migration Studies from York University. Her research program aims to
better understand North America's borders in the context of broader global processes as well as what local practices tell us about where, how, and for whom borders work. Much of Julie's research to date has focused on how migrants and advocates in communities around the Canada-US and Mexico-Guatemala borders interact with and challenge those borders.
Russel Zinn
Federal Court (Canada)
This panel will be chaired by Justice Russel W. Zinn of the Federal Court (Canada). Justice Zinn has been a member of the Federal Court (Canada) since 2008. Justice Zinn is the author of "The Law of Human Rights in Canada: Practice and Procedures." He is a member of the Immigration and Refugee Law Bench and Bar Liaison Committee and serves on the Governing Council of the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges (IARMJ).
Jona Zyfi
University of Toronto, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, Canada
Jona Zyfi is a doctoral student at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto working under the supervision of Professor Audrey Macklin. She holds an Honours BA in Criminology with Minors in Ethics and Psychology from Ryerson University and an MA in Criminology from the University of Toronto. Jona's MA thesis explored the Safe Country of Origin provisions in the EU, and the counterpart Designated Countries of Origin regime in Canada. Her research interests include forced and irregular migration, the criminalization and securitization of asylum seekers, refugee protection and status determination, and the intersections of citizenship, belonging, state sovereignty/power and human rights. She is currently a research assistant for a project examining private refugee sponsorship from sponsor's perspectives.
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