Members
Leslie Ader
Leslie Ader has a diverse interdisciplinary background. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, History & Pre-Law at Lebanon Valley College, her initial M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at Arcadia University, and another Master’s degree in Nationalism Studies at Central European University. Leslie also has fieldwork experience in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, working on advocacy projects for asylum seekers and disabled children. She is currently working on her doctorate that examines the legal discourses and narratives surrounding welfare rights for “disabled migrants” in Switzerland.
Laura Affolter
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Jenna Althoff
Jenna Althoff is a migration researcher with emphasis on structures and agency in migration governance, politico-institutional contexts of mobility regulation, and migration policy analysis. Her expertise also covers narratives and discourses on migration, evaluation of integration measures and concepts, analyses of mobility within and across labour markets, and knowledge transfer on migration topics. She has been working for various research institutes, think tanks and consultancies, and in different countries, for example Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Switzerland.
Profile, Publications, CV: http://www.inzentim.de/jenna-althoff/
Jasmine Andenmatten
Jasmine Andenmatten is currently working as a research and teaching assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr. Martina Caroni at the University of Lucerne. Since August 2020, she is part of AsyLex. Before that, she has done an internship at the Immigration Office in Basel-Stadt and at the UNHCR Office for Switzerland and Liechtenstein and worked for the Immigration Office in Lucerne. Her PhD thesis deals with the right to health in the asylum procedure.
Daniel Auer
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Marco Bitschnau
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Clara Bombach
Clara Bombach, MA Social and Cultural Anthropology, is a research associate at the Marie Meierhofer Institute for the Child in Zurich (MMI) (https://www.mmi.ch/). In her qualitative research projects, she focuses on the life courses of people who were cared for as infants or children in foster families or residential care. In her dissertation at the University of Zurich (Educational Science) she is working on an ethnography on the everyday life of children and their families in asylum camps in Switzerland. She is a lecturer at the Department of Ethnology at the University of Lucerne. She is a board member of FICE Switzerland (www.fice.ch) and a member of the interest group Quality4Children (www.quality4children.ch).
Profile, Publications: https://www.mmi.ch/mmi/team.html#clara-bombach
Lisa Marie Borrelli
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Aliénor Bossard
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Oleksii Chebotarov
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Myriam Conijn
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Nula Frei
Dr. iur. Nula Frei works as a senior assistant at the Institute for European Law at the University of Fribourg. She was previously a research assistant at the Center for Migration Law and the Swiss Competence Centre for Human Rights at the University of Bern. She wrote her dissertation on the protection of human trafficking victims in asylum procedures. Additionally, she is the author of numerous publications on asylum and refugee law. She previously worked at the UNHCR office for Switzerland and Lichtenstein.
Angie Gago
Angie Gago is a Senior Researcher at the Centre of Comparative, European and International Law of the University of Lausanne and a post-doctoral Fellow of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR − On the Move) for migration and mobility studies. She obtained her PhD in Political Studies at the University of Milan in 2018. Her research interests are multi-level politics, institutions and public policy. More specifically, she is interested in the interplay between European Union politics and national political dynamics and policy-making. Her research has been published in the Journal of European Integration, Irish Political Studies and South European Society and Politics, among others.
Mia Gandenberger
Mia Gandenberger is a PhD student at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of the University of Lausanne. Her research interests include social and economic inequalities, social policy, and public opinion towards redistribution in welfare states in diverse societies. She holds a Master in Socioeconomics with Option Population Studies from the University of Geneva and a Bachelor’s degree in Political and Administrative Science from the University of Konstanz.
Roxane Gerber
Roxane Gerber is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Institute of Demography and Socioeconomics of the University of Geneva. She is also part of the NCCR On the Move, in a project which aims at explaining and interpreting migration flows and stocks in Switzerland. She holds a Master's degree in Socioeconomics specialized in Population Studies (University of Geneva) and a Bachelor's degree in Economics (University of Fribourg). Her research interests focus on the interplay between migratory and family trajectories.
Teresia Gordzielik
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Anne-Laurence Graf
Anne-Laurence Graf-Brugère is a senior researcher at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Human Rights, thematic cluster migration. She is affiliated to the Universities of Neuchatel and Bern. Her recent researches focus on the prosecution of human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation in Switzerland, the impact of the Istanbul Convention (gender-specific violence) on the Swiss asylum law and practice and the relevance of the Global Compact on Migration for Switzerland. She is also part of the team that was mandated by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) to evaluate the legal protection and the decisions on asylum and return in the frame of the new accelerated asylum procedure.
Léa Hemmi
Léa Hemmi is currently working as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights in the Swiss Unit. Previously, she had a range of experience within the Swiss judicial system, both cantonal and federal, having notably practiced as an attorney-at-law and as a legal clerk at the Federal Administrative Court in asylum law.
Paula Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik
Paula Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik is a PhD student in political science at the University of Geneva. Her PhD research focusses on the interplay between migration and trade governance. She has studied political science and law in Münster and London and has previously worked as a Research Associate for the European Migration Network. Her research interests include EU politics, migration law and governance and the intersection between political science and legal studies.
David Hongler
David obtained a Bachelor and a Master of Law at the University of Zurich. During his studies, he worked as junior research assistant to Prof. Dr. Oliver Diggelmann at the Chair for International Law, European Law, Public Law and Philosophy of State. Later, he completed a second Master program in interdisciplinary China studies (with a focus on economics) at Peking University in Beijing. Having returned from China, he gained work experience at he Federal Administrative Court, the NGO Freiplatzaktion Zürich, as well as a law firm specialised in Migration Law. Since 2019, he serves as a board member of Freiplatzaktion Zürich. He is currently pursuing his PhD in public international law at the University of Zurich supported by the University's CANDOC scholarship. At the same time, he pursues research interests in Swiss and European refugee and migration law.
Jyothi Kanics
Jyothi Kanics has an interdisciplinary background including degrees in Russian & East European Studies and Russian Language & Literature (UNC-Chapel Hill) as well as a Masters in International Human Rights Law (University of Oxford) and a Masters in International Relations (Yale University). She carried out research in Switzerland as a Doctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne within the NCCR-on the Move, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her PhD dissertation presents a model for a child-rights based regularisation mechanism, which would enable undocumented children to fulfil their right to be heard and to have their best interests considered in such decisions. She has worked and published extensively on the human rights protection of migrants in vulnerable situations.
David Kaufmann
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Anne Kneer
After studying international relations in Geneva and law in Bern, Anne Kneer worked for more than six years at the Federal Administrative Court as a clerk in Division IV. In addition, she has published articles on topics such as credibility, appeal procedures and free administration of justice in asylum proceedings, and wrote her dissertation on "The asylum procedure as a special case - The specific characteristics of the asylum procedure as an explanation for deviations from the general administrative procedure" at the University of St.Gallen. Currently the head of the legal service of the Migration Office St. Gallen.
Anne-Cécile Leyvraz
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Annika Lindberg
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Philipp Lutz
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Maja Lysienia
Maja Lysienia holds a Master degree from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and a doctoral degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland (summa cum laude). She specializes in international and EU migration and asylum law. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the judicial dialogue between the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union in the area of asylum. She is an author of numerous publications on national, international and EU asylum and migration law, including a report on Poland published yearly by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles within the Asylum Information Database (AIDA). She combines academic research with a first-hand experience in legal assistance to asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and stateless persons. With her legal expertise and experience, she supports international and civil society organizations, both in Switzerland and Poland.
Doctoral dissertation in open access: https://suigeneris-verlag.ch/buecher/027
Noémie Mathivat
Noémie Mathivat is a PHD student at the University of Neuchâtel and research assistant at the Haute Ecole Pédagogique de Fribourg. After completing a Masters Degree in teaching French as Foreign Language in France and England and a Masters Degree for teaching in Switzerland she has been developing a professional experience in various contexts for many years: in private international schools, at the University of Jordan, in public schools in Switzerland as well as volunteering in an association that offers French classes to migrant learners. Throughout her teaching trajectory she has developed interests in the field of migration and mobility. Her PHD project aims at understanding the transnational school trajectories of migrant teenagers in Fribourg and Lausanne regarding the personal resources of the youngsters as well as the institutional context where they learn. She also works on migrant teachers’ professional integration in Swiss schools in the Research Unit 'Trajectoires' (HEPFR).
Livia Matter
Livia Matter currently is a PhD candidate at the University of Fribourg. Her PhD thesis examines the interoperability of EU information systems and its compatibility with the fundamental right to data protection.
Prior to commencing her dissertation, she worked as an asylum specialist at the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Basel and a bilingual Master's degree from the Universities of Basel and Geneva.
Research interests: migration law, human rights law, data protection law and European law.
Gabriela Medici
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Christina Mitmasser
Christina Mittmasser is a PhD fellow at the Geography Institute of the University of Neuchâtel. She studied Sociology and European Ethnology at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz (Austria). With her master's thesis, she examined the question of statelessness as well as the multiplicity of meanings of the concept of citizenship. Her current research on “Migrant Entrepreneurship in Switzerland. Opportunities and Constraints within Transnational Mobilities” is part of an nccr – on the move project on cross-border migrant entrepreneurship.
Cécile Navarro
Cécile Navarro is doctor in Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne and post-doctoral student at the Haute École de Suisse Occidentale Valais since January 2019. Her thesis, supported by a doc.ch excellence grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), examined the translocality of the rap music scene in Senegal through the physical and imaginary (im)mobility of its actors. Through her academic career, she has explored a wide variety of topics related to migration studies, from the expression of African ethnicity in Switzerland, to the pursuit of career trajectories through migration.
Jonathan Pärli
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Luca Pfirter
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Monika Plozza
Monika Plozza is board member of the SNyMS. She is a research associate and PhD fellow at the University of Lucerne at the chair of Prof. Dr. Martina Caroni, LL.M. (Yale), Delegate for Human Rights at the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. Monika studied law at the Universities of Lucerne and Edinburgh. Moreover, she was a Schindler Junior Scholar at the University of Zurich for the academic year 2021/2022.
Monika is writing a doctoral thesis with the working title ‘The Human Right to Science’. As part of her PhD project, she undertook research stays in 2022 at the Universities of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Oxford. Her research stays were completely funded by the Mobility Grant for Doctoral Students of swissuniversities (former doc.mobility grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation).
Her expertise includes human rights law, migration law, public international law, and Swiss constitutional law.
Profile and publications: www.unilu.ch/monika-plozza
Pia Radke
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Laura Rezzonico
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Tiphaine Robert
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Damian Rosset
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Laure Sandoz
Laure Sandoz currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography of the University of Neuchâtel. She is part of the NCCR On the Move, an interdisciplinary project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which aims to enhance the understanding of contemporary migration patterns. Her research interests include the interplay between mobility and social change, the influence of private sector intermediaries on migration governance, and the transformation of labour relations. She is the author of a book on the mobilities of the “highly skilled” towards Switzerland (Springer, 2019) and she published several peer-reviewed journal articles on selective migration policies, privileged mobilities, and transnational entrepreneurship.
Thomas Schaad
Thomas Schaad studied law at the University of Zurich. He then worked as a trainee in a Zurich law firm and was admitted to the Zurich bar in 2013. Subsequently, he worked as a litigating attorney, mainly in migration and criminal law. Since 2019 he is a research assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr. Giovanni Biaggini at the University of Zurich and is working on his PhD Thesis at the University of Bern under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Alberto Achermann on the obligation to cooperate under the Federal Act on Foreign Nationales and Integration.
Stefan Schlegel
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Mathis Schnell
Mathis Schnell a PhD-candidate at the Laboratoire d’études des processus sociaux (LAPS) of the University of Neuchâtel. In his dissertation, he is examining the institutional discourse around deservingness in the domain of asylum, notably claims based on the persecution due to gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Further, he is active as a teaching-assistant for quantitative methods on BA-level and associated with the NCCR - on the move.
Petra Sidler
Petra Sidler holds a MA in Political, Legal, and Economic Philosophy (PLEP) from the University of Berne and a BA in Social Sciences & Studies of Culture and Religion from the University of Fribourg. Since February 2019, she is a doctoral student at the NCCR – on the move working on the project Overcoming Inequalities with Education. The project is located at the School of Education at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and its main focus is on migrant pupils’ resilience. In her dissertation, she examines attitudes towards reciprocal acculturation at school and how they are intertwined with resilience outcomes of migrant pupils like e.g. their school adjustment.
Research interests: reciprocal acculturation, cultural identity, school adjustment of pupils with a migrant background, “migrant background” as a statistical category, quantitative methods
Irina Sille
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Robin Stünzi
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Alyssa Taylor
Alyssa Taylor is a PhD student at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of the University of Lausanne. She holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Mannheim (Germany), a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a minor in economics as well as a bachelor’s degree in the German language and culture from The Ohio State University (USA). Her research interests include migrant integration and subsequent political participation, enfranchisement policy, and public opinion towards topics of immigrant integration.
Dominique Tran
Dominique Tran holds a Bachelor and Master of Law from the University of Fribourg. After her studies, she volunteered for the "Mentoring Integration Project" of Caritas Vaud. Since January 2018, she has been working as a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Center of Public Law at the University of Lausanne under the supervision of Prof. Véronique Boillet. Her PhD project has the aim of delimiting the notion of integration and defining its role in the current context of Swiss Migration law through a human rights perspective.
Field(s) of research: Nationality law, Migration law, Human Rights Law, Constitutional law
Matthieu Vétois
Matthieu Vétois holds a MSc in experimental psychology from the University of Geneva. Since March 2019, he has been working as a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Social Psychology Unit of the University of Geneva. He is also part of the NCCR On the Move, an interdisciplinary project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which aims to enhance the understanding of contemporary phenomena related to migration and mobility. His doctoral thesis, jointly supervised by Prof. Juan-Manuel Falomir and Prof. Eva Green, investigates the interplay between social norms and news coverage of immigration on attitudes towards immigration.
Field of research: social and political psychology, affective science
Carole Viennet
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Barbara von Rütte
Barbara von Rütte currently works as a Postdoc at the Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel. Prior to that she has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen (D). She has written her PhD on the recognition of citizenship as a human right at the University of Berne within the framework of the NCCR - on the move. She has published widely in the field of citizenship, statelessness and migration law and acted as a consultant for the Council of Europe on administrative detention of foreign nationals. Since 2020 she is a member of the Federal Commission on Migration (EKM).
Nesa Zimmermann
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Eva Zschirnt
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