Diana Allan

Diana Allan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill. She is an anthropologist and filmmaker who received her training at Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, and is the creator of two grassroots media collectives in Lebanon, the Nakba Archive and Lens on Lebanon. Her ethnography, Refugees of the Revolution: Experiences of Palestinian Exile (Stanford University Press, 2014) won the 2014 MEMO Palestine academic book award and the 2015 Middle East Section Award at the American Anthropological Association. She was a recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in anthropology and film, and her ethnographic films Chatila, Beirut (2001), Still Life (2007), Nakba Archive Excerpts (2008), Fire Under Ash (2009), Terrace of the Sea (2010), and So Dear, So Lovely (2018) have screened in international film festivals and as gallery installations. Her current research projects––both written and filmic––explore the politics of Beirut’s informal economy and Palestinian littoral life, past and present. She is currently editing a collection of essays on the Nakba Archive (“Fragments From the Palestinian Expulsion,” forthcoming, Pluto Books).

Megan Bradley

Megan Bradley is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Development Studies at McGill University. Her research focuses on the resolution of refugee situations, forced migration and transitional justice, and displacement in disaster situations. With the support of a SSHRC Insight Grant, she is undertaking a major study on the evolution and influence of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). 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 (with James Milner and Blair Peruniak) of Refugees’ Roles in Resolving Displacement and Building Peace: Beyond Beneficiaries(Georgetown University Press, 2019).

Alongside her research and teaching, Professor Bradley has worked with a range of organizations concerned with forced migration, humanitarianism and human rights. 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 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Development Research Centre, and served as the Cadieux-Léger Fellow in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

For more information, see: https://meganbradley.ca/.

Rex Brynen

Rex Brynen is Professor in the McGill Department of Political Science. He has worked extensively on the Palestinian refugee issue. Among his various publications, he is co-editor (with Roula el-Rifai) of The Palestinian Refugee Problem: The Search for Resolution (2013), Compensation to Palestinian Refugees and the Search for Palestinian-Israeli Peace (2013), and Palestinian Refugees: Challenges of Repatriation and Development (2007). He has also served as an advisor on various aspects of the refugee issue to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, other governments, the World Bank, and United Nations agencies.

For more information, see: http://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/rex-j-brynen.

François Crépeau

François Crépeau is Full Professor and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, as well as the Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. He was appointed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants (2011-2017) by the United Nations Human Rights Council. He was the 2018 International Francqui Professor Chair for Social Sciences at Université catholique de Louvain, with the support of six other Belgian universities, and the 2016-2017 Robert F. Drinan S.J. Visiting Professor of Human Rights Chair at the Georgetown University Law Center (Washington, DC).He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), as well as a member of the Advisory Committee of the International Migration Initiative of the Open Society Foundations. He has received a Doctorate Honoris Causafrom the Université de Clermont Auvergne (France). He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and an Advocatus Emeritus of the Quebec Bar Association.

His most recent publications include: I. Atak and F. Crépeau (2019) “Legal Status and Vulnerabilities,” in T. Basaran and E. Guild (eds.) Global Labour and the Migrant Premium – The Cost of Working Abroad(London: Routledge); J. Carlier and F. Crépeau (2018) « De la ‘crise’ migratoire européenne au Pacte mondial sur les migrations : Exemple d’un mouvement sans droit? », 64 Annuaire Français de Droit International, 461-499; and F. Crépeau (2018) “Canadian Multiculturalism in Question: Diversity or Citizenship?” in A. Rea, E. Bribosia, I. Rorive and D. Sredanovic (eds.) Governing Diversity – Migrant Integration and Multiculturalism in North America and Europe (Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles).

For more information, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/law/about/profs/crepeau-francois and http://francoiscrepeau.com/.

Jennifer Elrick

Jennifer Elrick is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at McGill. Her research examines immigration policy and the boundaries of national belonging; state categorization practices (e.g. ethnic classifications in official statistics and legal categories created by immigration policies) and their role in producing social inequality; and the reciprocal relationship between ethnic identities and deliberation (understood as a particular form of political communication emphasizing inclusion and reason giving). Her work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Migration, International Migration Review, the Journal of International Migration and Integration, Sociological Forum and Sociology. She is currently working on two projects that focus on the role of immigration bureaucracies in immigration control. The first, “Determining the Role of Immigration Bureaucrats in Immigration Control: A Historical Case Study of Canada, 1952-1979,” is funded with a SSHRC Insight Development Grant. The second, “Immigration Bureaucrats and Immigration Control: Multi-Level Migration Management in Germany, 1955-1965,” is being undertaken with a FRQSC Research Support for New Academics Grant.

For more information, see: https://jenniferelrick.wordpress.com/.

Charles Gyan

Dr. Gyan is Assistant Professor at McGill’s School of Social Work. He holds a PhD in Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Master of Philosophy degree in Social Work from the University of Ghana. Before joining the McGill School of Social Work, he served as an Assistant Professor of social work at the University of Regina and Wilfrid Laurier University. He is a fellow of several Canadian research centers including the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), the Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa (TISCA) and the Manulife Centre for Community Health Research. His practice experience has been in the areas of community organizing, social policy analysis, and program development and evaluation.

Dr. Gyan blends academic and research interests with his interest and commitment to Social policy change, transnational social work practice and community development. His program of research is founded on his deeply held commitment to social justice. Through research he seeks to uncover, disrupt and challenge dogmas, structures, and discourses that produce and preserve subjugation and oppression of marginalized groups. He employs multi research methods (qualitative, quantitative and mixed method) to produce knowledge that questions and disrupts oppressive gender discourses, enhances social planning, and promotes marginalized groups’ full inclusion in society through social policies, community development and program development. The overall goal of his research program is to inform policy and other systems-level interventions in order to promote the full inclusion of marginalized groups.

Dr. Gyan is strongly committed to and passionate about engaging students in high-quality rigorous educational experiences in order to prepare them for competent and ethical practice. This includes helping students to develop the skills and knowledge needed to critically analyze social policies and their consequences for marginalized groups. He strongly believes that effective social workers, program developers and policy practitioners should be prepared to engage community members and program/policy beneficiaries in order to understand their experiences, needs, assets, and ideas, and be equipped with an array of skills and conceptual tools to effect, formulate, and evaluate policy, program and social services. In 2018, Dr. Gyan was awarded Anne Westhues Teaching Award in recognition of his teaching excellence.

Jill Hanley

Jill Hanley is Associate Professor in the McGill School of Social Work and Scientific Director of the SHERPA Research Centre on migration, health and social services. Her research focuses on access to social rights (health, housing, labour) for precarious status migrants, including refugees. Currently, she is the Quebec lead for a pan-Canadian, 4-year longitudinal CIHR study on the integration experiences of resettled Syrian refugees and the Principal Investigator on a grant examining the socio-economic trajectories of refugee claimants who entered Quebec via irregular border crossings in 2018-2019.

Her most recent relevant publications include: J. Hanley, N. Ives, J. Lenet, C.A. Walsh, S. Hordyk, S. Ben Soltane and D. Este (forthcoming, 2019) “Housing Insecurity and Health: An Intersectional Analysis of the Experiences of Migrant Women,” International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care;J. Hanley et al (forthcoming) “Transportation and Temp Agency Work: Risks and Opportunities for Migrant Workers,” Cahiers du géographie québécois; J. Hanley, A. Al Mhamied, J. Cleveland, O. Hajjar, G. Hassan, N. Ives, R. Khyar and M. Hynie (2018) “The Social Networks, Social Support and Social Capital of Syrian Refugees Sponsored to Settle in Montreal: Indications from their Early Experiences of Integration,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 50(2): 123-149; J. Beatson, J. Hanley and A. Ricard-Guay (2017) “The Intersection of Exploitation and Coercion in Cases of Canadian Labour Trafficking,” Journal of Law and Social Policy 26(1): 137-158; and N. Ives, J. Hanley, C. Walsh and D. Este (2014) “Transnational Elements of Newcomer Women’s Housing Insecurity: Remittances and Social Networks,” Transnational Social Review 4(2-3): 152-167.

Emma Harden-Wolfson

Dr Emma Harden-Wolfson (she/her) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE), Faculty of Education, McGill University. She is an international and comparative higher education policy specialist with regional specializations in Central Asia, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. Prior to joining DISE, Emma was Head of Research and Foresight at UNESCO’s International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO IESALC). Emma’s research explores how and why education policy changes across contexts and the implications of policy change and reform. Focussing on higher education policy, she researches the intersections between the policy process and lived experiences and the actors who are leading policy change. She studies the role of different actors involved in policy processes across the world to understand how educational change is initiated and led. Cutting across her research is a commitment to increasing equity by examining the historic barriers and current challenges to inclusion in higher education. Currently, her research falls into three broad areas: the new geopolitics of higher education, equitable internationalization, and the right to higher education.

Of most relevance to MRRG is this third area. Emma is passionate about the right to higher education, which she understands not only as who has access to higher education – and how the overall education pipeline can be prevented from narrowing as students progress through education – but how to support students to persist and succeed in a holistic manner. At UNESCO IESALC, she led a series of consultations with activists, academics, youth representatives and policymakers around the world on regional and thematic challenges relating to the right to higher education. This included a consultation on refugees and forcibly displaced people. Emma continues to work with UNESCO IESALC on the right to higher education.

For more information, see https://emmahardenwolfson.com/

Matthew Hunt

Matthew Hunt is an Associate Professor and the Director of Research in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University, as well as a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and an affiliate member of the McGill Biomedical Ethics Unit, Department of Family Medicine, and Institute for Health and Social Policy. Previously, he has worked as a physiotherapist in Montreal, the Canadian arctic, North Africa and the Balkans. Dr Hunt’s research focuses on two areas of inquiry: ethics of global health engagement and ethics and rehabilitation. In the area of global health and ethics, he is currently carrying out research on the ethics of closing humanitarian projects, palliative care in humanitarian crises, and intersection of values and humanitarian innovation. He co-leads the Humanitarian Health Ethics Network (humanitarianhealthethics.net).

Nicole Ives

Nicole Ives is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at McGill. She is a qualitative researcher who has been working with refugee and immigrant populations in resettlement for the past 28 years in Canada, Denmark, and the USA. Her research projects focus on Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada; integration experiences of refugee claimants in Quebec; collaboration between resettlement and early childhood education organizations; refugee children’s experiences of belonging in a recreational setting; and experiences of homelessness for newcomer women in Canada. Dr. Ives currently serves on the Board of Directors for Montreal City Mission, a social justice ministry providing support to refugee children and youth, refugee claimants, and refugee and immigrant elders, and is an Associate Member of McGill’s Centre for Research on Children and Families. She teaches Policy & Practice with Refugees (SWRK 400).

Her recent publications on refugee-related topics include:
J. Hanley, N. Ives, J. Lenet, C.A. Walsh, S. Hordyk, S. Ben Soltane and D. Este (forthcoming, 2019) “Housing Insecurity and Health: An Intersectional Analysis of the Experiences of Migrant Women,” International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care;
J. Hanley, A. Al Mhamied, J. Cleveland, O. Hajjar, G. Hassan, N. Ives, R. Khyar and M. Hynie (2018) “The Social Networks, Social Support and Social Capital of Syrian Refugees Sponsored to Settle in Montreal: Indications from their Early Experiences of Integration,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 50(2): 123-149; L. Morland, N. Ives, C. McNeely and C. Allen (2016) Collaboration between Head Start and Refugee Resettlement: Improving Access to Early Childhood Education for Refugees (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute); and C. Walsh, J. Hanley, N. Ives and S. Hordyk (2016) “Exploring the Experiences of Newcomer Women with Insecure Housing in Montréal, Canada,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 17: 887-904.

For more information, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/socialwork/people-0/faculty/ives.

Laura Madokoro

Laura Madokoro is a historian and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. Her research explores the entangled history of migrants, refugees, humanitarians and state authorities in shaping the possibilities and experiences of refuge. She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard, 2016) and co-editor of Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History (UBC, 2017). Her work has appeared in a number of journals including the Journal of Refugee Studies, Refuge and the Canadian Historical Review and she also contributes regularly to print, visual and social media, including www.activehistory.ca. Her current research explores the history of sanctuary practices among white settler societies.

Thomas Soehl

Thomas Soehl is Associate Professor of Sociology at McGill University and holds the Canada Research Chair in International Migration. His research examines the socio-political attachments of migrants, the ways in which host societies transform migrants, and how migration challenges modern nation-states. He brings a multi-level perspective to these issues. Shifting the analytic focus beyond the individual, his research highlights the importance of family dynamics for political incorporation and examines the inter-generational transmission of culture and socio-economic characteristics. Taking seriously that every immigrant is also an emigrant, he examines migrants’ cross-border ties and how settlement reconfigures these ties. Finally, taking a comparative view, he studies the diversity migration engenders, and the policies and politics emerging in response to migration. His recent book, co-authored with Renee Luthra and Roger Waldinger, provides the most comprehensive theoretical framework to date for understanding the trajectories of the children of immigrants, showing how they are socially structured not only by the contexts they grow up in but also the contexts of emigration. In addition, he has published more than a dozen articles in the leading sociology and migration journals. His work has been funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Fonds de Recherche Quebec Science et Culture, and the France Canada Research Fund.

Soehl received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California Los Angeles in 2014. He also earned degrees from the University of Kassel (Urban Planning), the Graduate Center at CUNY (MA Political Science) and the Harvard Kennedy School (Public Administration) and worked as a policy analyst for the New York City Council.

For more information, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/sociology/faculty/thomas-soehl.

Kazue Takamura

Kazue Takamura is Faculty Lecturer at McGill’s Institute for the Study of International Development. She joined ISID in September 2014. Takamura’s research is centered on the precarious mobility of migrants from developing countries, with a particular focus on Asia. Her research engages especially with questions of rights, gender, migrant vulnerabilities, and surveillance regimes. As a 2012-14 FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill’s School of Social Work, Takamura pursued research on Filipina migrant caregivers in Quebec and their distinct vulnerabilities that are inherent in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. In April 2017, she received an international research grant from the Toyota Foundation for a project entitled, “Ethnography of Immigration Detention and Migrant Advocacy in Japan and Canada.” Her research pays attention to the mechanism of migrant surveillance regimes, the plight of detained migrants and asylum seekers, and the role of migrant advocacy groups. Takamura has co-authored an ISID Policy Brief with Erik Kuhonta entitled, “Human Rights of Non-Status Migrants in Japan” that is based on her fieldwork in 2017. Takamura is currently working on a journal article examining the distinct characteristics of Japan’s migrant surveillance regime. She also has an edited book project that unpacks the intersection between migrant vulnerabilities, neoliberal promotion of labour flexibility, and punitive immigration laws in Asia. Takamura is a recipient of the Arts Undergraduate Society Teaching Excellence Award (2018) as well as the International Development Studies (IDS) Most Outstanding Faculty Award (2018).

Ipek Türeli

Ipek Türeli is Assistant Professor in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice. Her research explores the role of architecture in the articulation, mediation, and negotiation of political selves, and recognizes not only the agency of the built environment but also of architects. She is interested in how architects can use their professional knowledge to advocate for justice, a topic that has received relatively little attention. Professor Türeli’s current research spans the full range of social engagement in the profession, from the longer history of humanitarian architecture, such as that of religious missionaries, to more recent efforts by contemporary designers to contribute to social movements. Her work supports a new generation of architects interested in social justice by building on the profession's history in this realm, as well as the discipline’s record of urban advocacy. Her publications include Istanbul Open City (Routledge, 2017), and her teaching at McGill has explored challenges faced in refugee communities.

For more information, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/architecture/node/1539/faculty/tureli
http://architecturalnetworks.research.mcgill.ca/arch-304.html

Jon Unruh

Jon Unruh is Professor in the Department of Geography at McGill. His research, applied and policy work over the past 20 years has focused on the human geography of war affected countries. Dr. Unruh has worked extensively in contexts affected by largescale displacement, and has a particular interest is the recovery of war-affected land and property rights systems. His past work has dealt with Islamic, traditional, legal and warlord approaches to land rights in war-torn scenarios. His research has also examined the relationship between land tenure and environmental change. Dr. Unruh has worked in war-affected countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and has engaged with the United Nations, donors and a variety of governments to rebuild land and property rights systems after war.

His research has appeared in publications including the Natural Resources Forum, Progress in Development Studies, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

For more information, see: http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/faculty/unruh/.

Jennifer M. Welsh

Jennifer M. Welsh is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University and Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She was previously Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute and Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she co-founded the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. From 2013-2016, she served as the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on the Responsibility to Protect. She has published several books and articles on the ethics and politics of armed conflict, the ‘responsibility to protect’, humanitarian action, the UN Security Council, and Canadian foreign policy. Her most recent book, The Return of History: Conflict, Geopolitics and Migration in the 21st Century (2016), was based on her CBC Massey Lectures. Prof. Welsh sits on the Advisory Boards of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. In 2021, she was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Patricia Garcia Amado

Patricia Garcia Amado is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. She holds a PhD in Human Rights by the University of Deusto and her dissertation explored the housing rights of urban IDPs, particularly security of tenure as an element of local integration processes in Kampala, Uganda. With a background in Political Science (BAF) and in Humanitarian and Peace Studies (MSc), Patricia has lectured on forced migration, humanitarian protection, housing, land and property (HLP) and livelihoods in displacement, and has conducted research in academic and humanitarian institutions, mostly on the African continent. Her research interests lie on HLP in displacement, forced migrant's agency, and IDPs integration processes. She is currently working on the project "Protecting the internally displaced: Sovereignty, agency and the localization of international norms" at McGill University.

Erin Hetherington

Dr. Erin Hetherington is a CIHR postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in the department of epidemiology, biostatistics and occupational health. Her research focuses on social factors that contribute to inequalities in maternal and child health in marginalized populations, particularly immigrants and refugees. Erin’s work includes the analysis on large scale administrative data as well as the evaluation of programs and health care systems innovations to improve perinatal health outcomes. Erin holds a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Calgary, an MSc in Public Health from Harvard and a BA in political science from McGill.    

Dilmurat Mahmut (Maihemuti Dilimulati)

Dilmurat Mahmut received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Education, McGill University. His research interests include Muslim identity in the West, equity and education, education and violent extremism, and immigrant/refugee integration in Canada and beyond. He is a course lecturer at the Faculty of Education, McGill University and a FRQSC post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science, Concordia University. He was part of a McGill research team that studied Syrian refugee youths’ experiences within the Canadian adult education system. Currently, he is exploring how China's oppression of Uyghurs has been reshaping the Uyghur diaspora in Canada.

His publications include:

Mahmut, D., Melanson, M., Palmer, S. & Udun, A. (forthcoming). Becoming ‘true’ Muslims in Canada: Experiences of Uyghur immigrants. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Mahmut, D. (2022). What causes radicalization? Voices of Uyghur Muslims in Canada, Contemporary Voices:  St Andrews Journal of International Relations, 3(1). https://cvir.st-andrews.ac.uk/articles/abstract/10.15664/jtr.1614/
Mahmut, D. (2021). Belonging to Quebec and English Canada as Muslims: Perspectives of the highly educated Uyghur immigrants. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 41(2), 281-298. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2021.1947586
Mahmut, D., & Waite, E. (2021). Lost in Translation: Exploring Uyghur identity in Canada, Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 20(1), 173-191. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=taboo
Mahmut, D. (2021). Conflicting perceptions of education in Canada: Perspectives of well-educated Muslim Uyghur immigrants. Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education, 15(1), 34-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2020.1828331
Ghosh, R., Sherab, D., Dilimulati, M. and Hashemi, N. (2019). Creating a Refugee Space in the Canadian School Context: The Approach of an Inclusive Society. In A. W. Wiseman, L. Damaschke-Deitrick, E. L. Galegher and M. F. Park (Eds.). Education as a Panacea for Refugee Youth: Transitioning from Conflict to the Classroom. Routledge.

Ileana Nicolau

Ileana Nicolau is working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Political Science at McGill University on the project "Protecting the internally displaced: Sovereignty, agency and the localization of international norms." Previously, Ileana obtained her PhD at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI). In her doctoral dissertation, she examined and compared from an International Relations perspective, policies on internal displacement in Colombia, Kenya, and Peru. She also holds a BA in Latin American Studies and an MA in International Security, both from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). In parallel, Ileana has taught seminars on international and forced migration, as well as worked for ICMPD, the European Commission or UNHCR, on related issues. Her research interests include: IDP policy and politics, as well as the relationship between IDP protection norms and state sovereignty.

Gamze Ovacık

Gamze Ovacık is a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and her areas of interest and expertise are migration and asylum law, international law and human rights law. She has been teaching in these fields at Başkent University Faculty of Law where she holds a position as an assistant professor. In 2022-2023, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Gothenburg Department of Law within the ASILE Project on global asylum governance and the European Union’s role. She completed her Ph.D. at Bilkent University Faculty of Law in 2021 during which she conducted a comparative analysis of Turkish and European judicial practices on asylum, removal and immigration detention against the background of Turkey’s position as a safe third country. During her Ph.D. studies she joined Radboud University Centre for Migration Law as a visiting researcher in 2019-2020. Since 2012 she has worked with UNHCR, IOM and ICMPD Turkey offices on full-time and freelance basis on various subjects including human rights considerations regarding assisted voluntary return, forced return and alternatives to immigration detention as well as within legislative processes on migration and asylum. She obtained her L.L.M. degree on Public International Law from University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law in 2007. 

Her current research focuses on externalization of migration control, safe third country practices in EU-Turkey and Canada-USA contexts, attribution of international responsibility in the context of asylum cooperation and legality of withdrawal from international human rights treaties.

PhD Students

Adnan Al Mhamied

Adnan Al Mhamied is a Syrian PhD student at McGill’s School of Social Work. He has worked with internally displaced Syrians in his hometown of Dar’a in southern Syria, as well as with Syrian refugees in Jordan. Adnan’s research focuses on Syrian families in transition and post-migration, and more specifically the experiences of Syrian refugee fathers in Canada. He is also part of a national team for the Refugee Integration and Long-Term Health Outcomes in Canada project. This longitudinal study aims to understand how social integration influences mental and physical health, to inform refugee resettlement and integration practices. He is also working as a Research Officer with Save the Children Denmark on a UNICEF funded project that aims to deliver a Contextualization Guidance on Mental Health & Psychosocial Support for Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups.

His publications include: J. Hanley, A. Al Mhamied, J. Cleveland, O. Hajjar, G. Hassan, N. Ives, R. Khyar and M. Hynie (2018) “The Social Networks, Social Support and Social Capital of Syrian Refugees Sponsored to Settle in Montreal: Indications from their Early Experiences of Integration,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 50(2): 123-149.

Aseel Alzaghoul

Aseel graduated as a medical doctor from University of Jordan in 2017. Her research interests involve early childhood development, refugee populations' mental health and psychosocial interventions in low- and middle-income countries. She has a master’s degree in War and Psychiatry from King’s College London. Currently, she is doing her PhD at McGill university, mental health program. Her PhD project is to adapt and implement a trauma-informed (but not focused) parent (peer)-implemented adaptation of Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) intervention for a diverse community of refugee claimants living in shelters in Montreal, in collaboration with asylum seekers themselves.

Her publications include:
Alzaghoul, A., McKinlay, A., & Archer, M. (2022). Post-traumatic stress disorder interventions for children and adolescents affected by war in low- and middle-income countries in the Middle East: Systematic review. BJPsych Open. 8(5): E153.
Ponguta, L.A, Moore, K., Varghese, D., Hein, S., Ng, A., Alzaghoul, A., Benavides-Camacho, M.A., Sethi, k., and Al-Soleiti, M. (2022). Landscape Analysis of Early Childhood Development and Education in Emergencies. Journal of Education in Emergencies. 8(1).

Martin Breul

Martin Breul is a PhD Student in the Department of English at McGill. His MA research on the representation of refugees in graphic novels and comics has been generously funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). This study investigates how narrative forms of graphic literature, both fictional and non-fictional, counter and respond to discriminatory and dehumanizing visions of survival migrants that circulate the public in the European Union and North America. Besides his interest in contemporary refugee literature, comics activism, and narrative resistance, Martin currently studies the reception of Canadian literature in the GDR, co-manages the Montreal International Poetry Prize at McGill, and writes his own poetry and short fiction.

Christopher Chanco

As a PhD student at McGill’s History Department, Christopher specialises in the 20th century history of humanitarianism and human rights, with a particular focus on the intersections between the treatment of refugees, migrant diasporas, and humanitarian solidarities in the context of Cold War geopolitics. Under the supervision of Professor Laura Madokoro, his dissertation research looks into the experiences of Jewish humanitarian organisations in Canada, France, and the United States that worked on behalf of various groups of refugees across the postwar period. This builds on his MA thesis on the transnational history of the Canadian Jewish Labour Committee and its activism on behalf of minorities and refugees in North America.

Before coming to Canada, Christopher worked as a writer and researcher in the non-profit sector, where he has published on issues concerning post-colonial democracy, human rights, civil society, and the politics of internal displacement and ethnonationalist conflict in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

Shayla Chilliak

Shayla Chilliak is a PhD student in the program of School and Applied Child Psychology in McGill's Department of Education and Counselling Psychology. Her doctoral research investigates how asylum-seeking children are questioned within Canada's refugee determination process. Her research draws on the fields of forensic and developmental psychology, which have identified cognitive and social factors impacting children's abilities to describe adverse and traumatic events in interviews and court testimonies. She is interested in whether best practices for interviewing child witnesses, emerging from the above literature, are applied through policy and practice in Canadian asylum decisions.

Didem Doğar

Didem Doğar is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow at the McGill University Faculty of Law, studying the criminalization of migration under the supervision of Professor François Crépeau, and a research affiliate with the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London. Her dissertation examines current approaches to general securitization procedures including admissibility and security certificate schemes in Canada and abroad, and how these approaches influence broader refugee rights. Before embarking on her studies, Didem worked as a refugee status determination assistant at UNHCR in Turkey, where she specialized in Article 1F cases. At McGill, she worked as a research assistant to Professor René Provost for his Insurgent Justice Project, to Professor François Crépeau on the correlation between international trade law and migrant workers’ rights, and as an assistant for the Law Teaching Network. She is currently serving as a legal assessor to the Committee on Student Discipline of McGill and is a member of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) and the legal research committee of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL). Didem graduated from Bilkent University in 2010 and is a member of the Istanbul Bar. In a past life, she held a position at the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and worked as a corporate lawyer in Istanbul.

Her publications include:
Didem Doğar (2017) “Against All Odds: Turkey’s Response to ‘Undesirable but Unreturnable’ Asylum-Seekers,”Refugee Survey Quarterly 36(1): 107-125.
For more information, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/law/grad-studies/about-graduate-studies/our-doctoral-students#didemdogar.

Merve Erdilmen

Merve Erdilmen is a PhD candidate in Political Science with a Gender Studies Specialization at McGill University and works under the supervision of Megan Bradley. She is a research assistant for Durable Solutions Cluster at Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN) and consultant for International Organization for Migration (IOM). She also worked as a research associate at GLOBALCIT at the European University Institute on an international project on statelessness and birthright citizenship.  

Her research focuses on the relationship between gender, shelter, access to health care, and livelihoods for refugees in the Middle East. Her current project aims to understand the ways in which various actors, including international organizations, civil society, refugee-led organizations, grass roots, and municipalities, implement and practice global gender norms in Turkey.  

Her most recent publications include:  
Erdilmen, M. (2021). “Review of Justice for People on the Move: Migration in Challenging Times by Gillian Brock,” Journal of Refugee Studies (in press);  
Kayran, E. and Erdilmen, M. (2020). “When Do States Give Voting Rights to Non-Citizens? The Role of Population, Policy, and Politics on the Timing of Enfranchisement Reforms in Liberal Democracies,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(13), 2855-2876.;  
Erdilmen, M. and Honohan, I. (2020). “Trends in Birthright Citizenship in EU 28: 2013-2020,” Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) Policy Briefs, 2020/2;  
Erdilmen, M. and Sosthenes, W. (2020). “Opportunities and Challenges for Localization of Humanitarian Action in Tanzania,” The Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN) Working Papers 8.

Maya Fennig

A social worker and human rights activist, Maya Fennig is dedicated to researching and designing innovative, culturally responsive interventions 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. Maya’s doctoral research examines the effects of social and cultural factors on Eritrean refugees’ mental health.

In 2015, Maya was awarded a prestigious Jeanne Sauve Public Leadership Fellowship to address issues of diversity and refugee integration in Quebec, Canada. In her home country of Israel, she has worked for more than ten years with the African refugee community and has co-organized numerous demonstrations to advocate for their rights. Maya earned a Bachelor of Social Work (honours) at TelAviv University in 2011 and a Master of Social Work in 2014 from Washington University in St. Louis. She has received numerous scholarships and awards for her contributions and achievements including the prestigious 2019 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Results of her work have been published in various academic journals including The British Journal of Social Work and The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

Narjes Hashemi

Narjes Hashemi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education within McGill University’s Faculty of Education. Her research interests encompass social justice education, educational equity, education in diverse societies, development education, and the integration of immigrants and refugees in Canada. Currently, she is immersed in a doctoral project investigating the Educational Trajectories of Afghan Refugee Youth in Montreal and Vancouver.

Her publications include:
Hashemi, N. Tangirala, N. (2022). Discovering inequities in historical narrative: A discourse analysis of the representation of First Nations Canadians in “Discover Canada: a study guide for citizenship”. Reading Sociology: Unsettling a Settler Colonial Project & Re/writing Sociological Narratives. Oxford University Press.
Ghosh, R., Sherab, D., Dilimulati, M. and Hashemi, N. (2019). Creating a Refugee Space in the Canadian School Context: The Approach of an Inclusive Society. In A. W. Wiseman, L. Damaschke-Deitrick, E. L. Galegher and M. F. Park (Eds.). Education as a Panacea for Refugee Youth: Transitioning from Conflict to the Classroom, 1st Edition. Routledge.

Cynthia Kreichati

Cynthia Kreichati is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Trained as a pharmacist, Cynthia holds a Masters in Sociology from the American University in Beirut and has worked in health and humanitarian organizations for more than 10 years. Her research explores the relationships between politics, migration, and socioecological transformations. She is now completing her doctoral dissertation project — a historical ethnography of an infrastructural project of development targeting the Litani river in Lebanon.

Jaime Lenet

Jaime Lenet is a PhD Candidate in the School of Social Work, a registered and practising social worker, and a mother to two young children. Her doctoral research explores the Canadian deportation experiences of former refugee claimants. Jaime has more than fifteen years of experience working with immigrants, refugee claimants, and other forms of migrants in a variety of community settings. She holds a BA in Political Studies and History, and MA in International Affairs, and an MSW.

Ricardo John Munyegera

Ricardo John Munyegera is a Ugandan PhD student at McGill University’s School of Social Work. With his research experiences working and living with refugees in both Uganda and Germany, he aims to understand the local refugee integration policies and how they explicitly sustain the self-reliance model in Uganda. Ricardo’s research is titled: “The Refugee-Host Integration Strategy: Implications on Self-Reliance Model Sustainability in Uganda.” This study will use a case study of Bidibidi refugee settlement, Yumbe district, northern Uganda.  Ricardo is looking forward to immersing himself in the understanding of refugee self-reliance and integration which is being implemented through the UNHCR’s CRRF and the progressive refugee policies in Uganda. Thus, refugee interventions changed from being humanitarian to developmental perspectives. Ricardo’s research also adopts both the social capital and social exchange theories in a naturistic or an ethnographic approach. Finally, his research interests are related but not limited to refugee and host-community development, social policies implementation, advocacy for social change and social justice.

His publications include:
Ricardo John Munyegera, Souvik L. Chakraborty, M. Kahmann and M. Trost (2016) “Europe is complicated”- Refugees perception of the Dublin System. Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Kolkata, SURVEY, 55 (3&4), 1-16.

Sarah Nandi

Sarah Nandi is a doctoral candidate at McGill University in the Department of Political Science with a focus in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her research interests include knowledge production about sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in forced migration situations from ‘above’ and ‘below’. Using feminist qualitative methods, she examines questions surrounding expertise-by-training versus expertise-by-experience in humanitarian encounters, the standardization of localized experiences into global data, and the reproduction of gendered and racialized international hierarchies in agenda setting. Before coming to McGill, she read for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Worcester College, Oxford where she wrote her dissertation on the tensions between humanitarian development and localized Sahrawi feminist organizing. Prior to this, she was a Fulbright-Nehru research scholar in Kolkata, India focusing on the refusal of rehabilitation programs by transgender refugee survivors of sexual violence. She is proficient in Bengali, Arabic, and French.

Rabia Salihi

Rabia Salihi is a PhD student at the Department of Political Science of McGill University, specializing in Gender and Women’s Studies. Rabia has a master’s degree in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and an MA in Development Studies with track in Governance of Migration and Diversity from the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Rabia’s current research focuses on Europe’s return policies in regard to Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, with a particular focus on assisted voluntary return and reintegration schemes. Rabia is also working on internal displacement issues in Afghanistan and for her PhD, she researches the identity politics of the Hazara’s displacement and dispossession in Afghanistan. Rabia also investigates violations of human rights and international crimes and particularly, the forced displacement of the Hazara under the Taliban regime at the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization.

Roda Siad

Roda Siad is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University. Her research interests are in the intersection of technology, forced migration and humanitarianism. Her doctoral study considers how innovation and emerging technologies are shaping the everyday governance of refugees in Kenya and Uganda. This research is supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a Doctoral Research Award through the International Development Research Centre. Roda has over six years of experience in the non-profit, settlement and integration sector and currently serves as board member at the Refugee Centre in Montreal. She is also the graduate coordinator for the McGill Refugee Research Group.

Ian Van Haren

Ian Van Haren is a PhD student in Sociology at McGill University. His academic research focuses on Canadian migration policy and refugee resettlement. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he was the student coordinator for the MRRG. His current research projects include studying the Private Sponsorship of Refugees program in Canada and understanding the experiences of Syrians who arrived as refugees in Canada.

Two of his recent publications include: The effect of social capital on migrant labor market success: evidence from refugee sponsorship in Canada and Civil society organizations and collective sponsorship of refugees in Quebec.

Rine Vieth

Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McGill University. A legal anthropologist, their research broadly considers the intersections between law, society, and religion. Their doctoral project, "Proving Faith: Conversion in the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunals," considers how the UK asylum system assesses asylum-seekers' claims for status on the basis of belief, and how these assessments are experienced by asylum-seekers and their supporters. Before coming to McGill, Rine completed a MSc in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a MA in Islamic Law at SOAS.

​​For more information, see: https://rinevieth.carrd.co

Cristina Yépez Arroyo

Cristina Yépez Arroyo is a PhD student in Anthropology at McGill. Cristina’s work focuses on the crossroads between gender, human mobility, detention and deportation both in continental Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. Her current project works on the question of how to address places that have been systematically euphemized or that cannot be easily labeled as detention centers: spaces often identified by their “weirdness”, informality, and ability to pass unnoticed. Cristina is interested in exploring methodologies that combine community organizing and academia, and experimenting with visual and sound work, theater and drawing. Cristina co-authored the book “Corpografías: Gender and Borders in Latin America (2017)” published in Spanish by IDRC and FLACSO-Ecuador.

Montreal Community Affiliates

Benjamin Gwinneth

Benjamin Gwinneth is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the Université de Montréal. Benjamin uses a combination of geochemical proxies applied to lake sediment cores to reconstruct changing climate, population, vegetation, and fire use in the past, mostly in Mesoamerica. Benjamin is interested in palaeoecology, migration as a response to climate change, and how perspectives from the past can inform responses to anthropogenic climate change.

Alumni

Farah Atoui
Emilia Gonzalez
Tareq Hardan
Kip Jorgensen
Christina Klassen
Lyn Morland
Nik (Nicolas) Parent
Colin Scott
Gabriel Yahya Haage
Yufei (Mandy) Wu