Migration & Security Research Team

RESEARCH COORDINATOR

LORENZO GONTIJO

Originally from Brazil, Lorenzo is a master’s student in International Development Studies & Global Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research focuses on subjects related to migration and the intersection between politics, development, and humanitarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. He sees development, migration, and security through a critical lens, seeking to shed light on the paradoxes underlying the link between these themes and advocating for the reduction of uneven relationships of power both on the global and local level.

RESEARCHERS

ALIMA KASSENOVA

Alima is originally from Kazakhstan and currently lives and works in France. She recently graduated from Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program in Central, East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IMCEERES) operated by University of Glasgow (UK), Tartu University (Estonia) and Jagiellonian University (Poland). Her research interests cover all components related to mobility, from migrants identity to protection of migrants’ rights. Her professional experience is also connected to the field of migration governance.

BUSHRA ALI KHAN

Bushra completed her master’s in Migration and Diaspora Studies from SOAS, University of London in 2021. Originally from India, she is currently working as a senior sub-editor at The Week Junior in London, UK. She is also Editor and Mentor at online media organization, The Migration News. Her research interest lies in the figure and concept of the ‘subaltern’ drawing from the theories of power, hegemony, and subjugation by Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Spivak and Antonio Gramsci. She is also interested in the inter-relation between the concept of ‘necropolitics’ and ‘waiting’.

DAMLA CALIK

Damla is from Turkey and has studied a BA in Sociology and a master’s in Social Policy at Middle East Technical University (METU). She has worked in the different (I)NGOs in Turkey focusing on the vulnerabilities of refugee children and youth, the LGBTI community, and women within the context of migration. Her main interests are social protection, child protection specifically, and intersection with gender. She is also interested in the EU-Turkey deal within the context of the Syrian mass influx.

SHROMONA JANA

Shromona is a political science student from Kolkata, India. She is currently on her way to graduate with an MA in International Security from the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Sciences Po, with concentrations in Research Methods and Asian Studies. She is particularly interested in borderland security, postcolonial international relations, and indigenous security in South Asia, aiming to study people in porous borderlands from a bottom-up approach focusing on the community and individual experience of ‘security’ in its many forms and definitions.

TAMUKA CHEKERO

Tamuka, a Zimbabwean national, is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. His current doctoral research looks at how people who have crossed and re-crossed national borders form relationships and make and maintain connections through conviviality in Southern Africa. Tamuka was part of the Africa Fellowship Program of the World Bank, in the Social Development Global Practice (2020). His research interests include migration, mobility, conviviality, security, social cohesion and economic inclusion among migrants, refugees, displaced persons, and other vulnerable communities.

XANDER CREED

Xander is the team’s Vice-coordinator. and he is a recent graduate from the MA Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, within the Governance of Migration and Diversity track, and a minor in Conflict and Peace Studies. Their research interest lies in the migration-development-security nexus, human security, politics, and migration policy. From this, Xander favors research approaches which challenge the nation-state worldview, and instead draw attention to the human, and their experience with mobility.