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.
Daniel Auer
Maud Bachelet
Maud Bachelet is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. She holds a bachelor’s degree in European Studies from Maastricht University and has recently completed a dual master’s degree in European affairs and international migration. Her research focuses on responsibility-sharing in European migration governance, under the framework of the FNS project “Connecting countries and dividing people” (https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/208858).
Nicolas Blumenthal
Clara Bombach
Clara Bombach, MA Social and Cultural Anthropology, is a lecturer for Social Work at Bern University of Applied Sciences. Specializing in qualitative research, she focusses on child, youth welfare and forced migration studies, specifically examining the experiences of young children and adolescents in out-of-home placements and asylum shelters. Her dissertation at the University of Zurich, that she successfully defended in spring 2023, is an ethnography about the everyday lives of children and their families in Swiss asylum centers. She is interested in the conditions children need to grow up well and safely and passionate about creating safe and nurturing environments for children.
Profile, Publications: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clara-bombach/?locale=en_US
Jonas Bornemann
Jonas Bornemann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Université de Lausanne and the HES-SO Valais-Wallis and a postdoctoral fellow of the nccr – on the move. His research predominantly focuses on EU constitutional and migration law. Previously, Jonas worked as a doctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz and as a legal trainee at the Odysseus Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe.
Lisa Marie Borrelli
Joel Brauchbar
Joel Brauchbar obtained his Bachelor and Master of Law at the University of Lucerne while focusing on transnational law (Transnational Legal Studies). Prior to his studies, Joel lived for several years in Ghana where he completed the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB Diploma) and worked in a law firm. After working in an assistant position at the University of Lucerne, he obtained 2019 a position at the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) and acquired experience working for a brief period at the Cantonal Court in Lucerne. Joel established in 2023 that there are a number of questions regarding the expulsion practice in Switzerland (in particular: “Landesverweisung”) and thus decided to pursue a PhD which deals with issues regarding entry bans, expulsion practice and crimmigration in Switzerland.
Palmo Brunner
Palmo Brunner is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Zurich's Political Science Department. Her research areas encompass diaspora and immigrant politics, transnationalism, social movements, and contentious politics. Her dissertation investigates the voice of diasporas within the dynamics of democracy and autocracy, considering both inclusive and illiberal state policies. Focusing on the Tibetan diaspora in Switzerland and Canada, her qualitative study explores how diaspora mobilization is simultaneously embedded in and shaped by multiple contexts. Additionally, Palmo contributes to public health research projects at Chair of Democracy and Public Governance.
https://www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/institut/mitarbeitende/staff/brunner.html
Emirhan Darcan
Dr Emirhan Darcan - SNF SAR Fellow - works at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bern. He came to the university with the Scholars at Risk program, which is an international network that supports researchers at risk.Emirhan Darcan researches and teaches on the topics of radicalization and de-radicalization, police and society, crime and public order, and much more. Emirhan Darcan is also involved in the initiative "Education for All - Now!", which campaigns for the integration of refugeesin school, training and work. The initiative demands simplified access to education as a basic right for all. Profile : https://www.krim.unibe.ch/ueber_uns/personen/darcan_emirhan/index_ger.htmlPublications : https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emirhan-DarcanLinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/emirhan-darcan-ph-d-4b02b158/?originalSubdomain=ch
Anna Laura Elmer
Anna Laura Elmer is a PhD-student and research assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr. Oliver Diggelmann at the University of Zurich. She is affiliated to the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law (UZH). In her PhD-Project she examines questions related to legal residency status of minors. Her research interests include questions related to Swiss and European refugee and migration law.
Virginie Fazel
Virginie Fazel is a scholar with an interdisciplinary background. She first studied French literature and social sciences at the University of Lausanne, followed by a Master's in the sociology of religions in Fribourg. She conducted fieldwork in Lebanon for her Master's thesis on the impact of war and forced migration on Syrian refugees' religiosity. Currently a PhD student at the University of Zurich, she investigates the roles of local and online communities in the lives of young individuals with migration backgrounds in Switzerland, combining the topics of migration, digitalisation and religion. Alongside her academic pursuits, Virginie worked with NGOs, focusing on the right to education and children's well-being.
Irina Fehr
Irina Fehr is a socio-legal PhD researcher working on the role of criminal law in European migration control. More specifically, she investigates the criminalization of migration, human smuggling, and migrant solidarity, as well as state-perpetrated crimes against migrants and the possibilities to litigate cases of border violence within domestic criminal justice systems. In her research, she combines classical legal research with critical theory and empirical methods, as part of which she has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the spring of 2023. After the completion of her BA in Political Science at the University of Zurich and MA in European Global Studies at the University of Basel, she is currently finalizing her PhD at the Department of Criminal Law, Tilburg University, in the Netherlands.
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.
Roxanne Gerber
Teresia Gordzielik
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.
Enja Jäggi
Enja Jäggi is a researcher at the University of Bern working with Prof. Alberto Achermann in the Department of Public Law. Her research project examines migration control through criminal law. Her interests include migration and social policy, human rights, crimmigration, criminal law and much more.
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.
Franca Elena Kappes
Franca is a doctoral student at the International Relations and Political Science Department at the Graduate Institute, and visiting scholar at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY, NYC (Research Fellow). She holds a Master in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute and a Bachelor in Political Science from the Free University Berlin. Her academic interests lie at the intersection between International Political Sociology, Critical Security, Disaster, and Mobility Studies. More specifically, her research focuses on disaster migration and governance, the relationship between neo-nomadic mobility and execution of statecraft in Small Island Developing States, and the politics of resilience in the Anthropocene. Her dissertation combines dynamic network analysis with critical counter mapping techniques to contrast the post-Hurricane movement patterns of hypermobile kinetic elites with those of the Puerto Rican population between 2017-2023.
Nina Khamsy
Nina Khamsy is an anthropologist who specialises in political and legal issues at the intersection of digital technologies and migration studies. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Neuchâtel and at NCCR on the move, the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus. She completed her PhD at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute in 2024. Her doctoral research, funded by the SNF Doc.CH grant, was an ethnography of the uses of smartphones, social media, and biometric technologies in the migration journeys of Afghans on the move across Southeastern Europe.
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.
Aileen Kreyden
Ana Lupu
Ana Lupu is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the German Department of the University of Lausanne. She received her PhD in Modern German Literature from the University of Zurich in 2024. Earlier, she was a visiting scholar at the German Department of the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on Switzerland's role as a turning point for international literature, leading one part of the SNSF research project 'Die Schweiz als Drehscheibe internationaler Literatur. Eine Verlagsgeschichte der Schweiz im Zeitalter der Extreme, 1914-1991‘. She argues that migration and mobility are constitutive factors for Swiss literature, not merely accidental factors that affected some of its texts. For this reason, she conducts research on the life and work of emigrant and refugee authors, publishers and literary agents who produced literature under the most difficult conditions and distributed it in other countries. Originally from Bucharest (Romania), she wants to combine her personal and professional life by engaging in migration topics addressing the tension between the 'global' and the 'local', multilingualism, cultural diversity and vulnerability in the academic and migration context. She received several excellence awards from the University of Zurich and the League of Romanian Students Abroad. She is a scholarship holder of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Doc.CH-Grant), the Swiss Study Foundation and the Ernst Göhner Foundation. Since her studies she has been working and volunteering for the 'Asylorganisation Zürich' (AOZ).
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ana-lupu7
Philipp Lutz
Philipp Lutz is a political scientist primarily interested in the political consequences of international migration with a focus on the comparative study of government policies and public opinion. He is currently a senior researcher at the University of Geneva and an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He holds a PhD from the University of Bern (2019) and has been a guest researcher as the European University Institute (Fiesole, IT) and the London School of Economic and Political Science (UK).
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 concerned a judicial dialogue between the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union in the area of asylum. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne and HES-SO Valais-Wallis, analysing migrant workers' precarization in times of crisis. She combines academic research with supporting civil society organizations working in the area of asylum and migration.
Doctoral dissertation in open access: https://suigeneris-verlag.ch/buecher/027
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maja-lysienia-phd-180021a5/
Cecilia Manzotti
Cecilia Manzotti is a PhD candidate at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology of the University of Sussex (UK), currently based in Switzerland. Her research focuses on the identification of stateless asylum-seekers and, more broadly, on the determination of asylum seekers’ nationality and country of origin, in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In her research, Cecilia adopts a socio-legal perspective and relies on a combination of doctrinal analysis and primary data collection through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree (Università degli Studi, Milan) and a Master’s degree (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) in Ethics and Political Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Conflict Management (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa). Before joining the University of Sussex, she worked for several years in refugee protection and statelessness prevention and eradication with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and different NGOs in Italy, the Middle East and Africa. Moreover, she conducted research on smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Cecilia’s profile and publications can be seen at https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p482555-cecilia-
manzotti/about.
Anna Marino
Anna Marino is a Doctoral Researcher at the Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines of the University of Neuchâtel and a fellow at NCCR on the move, the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus. Anna possesses expertise in international relations, EU affairs and migration governance and experience as junior lecturer at the Political Sciences Department of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University and as blog co-creator and writer at WE CHALLENGE - Envisioning Change. Her PhD thesis "Who’s Beyond the Border? Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Migration in Southern European Border Societies" is situated within the broader NCCR on the move project on "Narratives of Crisis and Their Influence in Shaping Discourses and Policies of Migration and Mobility".
Paolo Martinelli
Paolo Martinelli has an academic background in psychology, holding a Master’s degree in Health Psychology from the University of Lausanne. During his master’s internship, he worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the staff health department. He also served as a student assistant at the University of Lausanne’s Research Center for Health, Aging, and Sport Psychology. During that time, he designed and implemented the first-ever study on successful aging in Africa, focusing on how laypeople in Switzerland, Morocco, and Togo perceive and define successful aging. Currently, he works as a research fellow at the School of Engineering and Management Vaud (HEIG-VD, HES-SO), where he contributes to projects aimed at analyzing and understanding the inner workings of the Swiss healthcare system. Meanwhile, he recently embarked on a doctoral journey, where he explores the lived experiences of elderly migrants in Switzerland. His PhD research focuses on how these individuals access and navigate the Swiss healthcare system, adopting a processual and dynamic perspective on migrant integration.
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.
Clare Maxwell
Clare Maxwell is a doctoral student in Anthropology and Sociology at L’Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement Genève. She holds a Master's of Development Studies, and a joint Bachelors degrees in Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies. Her research focuses on democratic strategies and processes in the Kurdish diaspora, and their links with indigenous political organization. She comes from a background in journalism and policy education with a focus on migration and asylum rights, and direct democracy.
Jonathan Pärli
Monika Plozza
Monika Plozza is a senior research associate (postdoc) and lecturer at the University of Lucerne, specialising in public law, with a focus on public international law, international human rights law, migration law, and constitutional law. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Monika worked in the Legal Department of the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). More information about Monika can be found here.
Janine Prantl
Dr. iur. Janine Prantl is a senior researcher and lecturer in international and European law at the University of Fribourg. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Innsbruck, and her first law degree at the University of Vienna. For her dissertation, Janine set her research focus in international and European human rights and refugee law. The dissertation elaborated on the legal framework for refugee resettlement to the European Union, with comparative aspects from the US system. Janine also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia University. She received a one-year post-graduate fellowship from Columbia to support the Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugee Rights as Legal Fellow. Janine then worked on a project on community-based refugee sponsorships as Immigration Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell Law School before she came to Switzerland. https://www.unifr.ch/ius/fr/faculte/collaborateursscientifiques/maitresassistants/people/367706/661c4
Giulia Raimondo
Dr Giulia Raimondo is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg (Faculty of Law Economics and Finance). Her research interests lie in public international law, international migration law, and legal philosophy. Before joining the University ofLuxembourg, Giulia received a PhD in International Law (summa cum laude) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. While completing her PhD, Giulia visited the University of Oxford thanks to an SNF DocMobility Fellowship. Her doctoral thesis examined the international responsibility of the EU and its member states for human rights violations during the implementation of the European integrated border management. Her PhD won the 2022 Swiss Association for International Law Prize and is forthcoming with Hart Publishing. In addition to the PhD, she holds a Master of Laws from McGill University and a law degree from the Catholic University of Milan.
Fabienne Rast
Fabienne Rast completed her law studies at the University of Lucerne. During her master's studies, she worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr. iur. Martina Caroni. Since March 2025, she has been working at the same chair as a research assistant and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the field of migration law. In addition to migration law, she is also interested in the research fields of public health law and administrative law.
Corinne Reber
Corinne Reber, MLaw (Zurich), LL.M. (Maastricht), currently works as a research and teaching assistant for Prof. Dr. Martina Caroni at the University of Lucerne. While her research focuses on various aspects of asylum and migration law, her dissertation deals with the variety of clarification processes in asylum procedures (identity and origin clarifications, age assessments, embassy investigations) and their impact on the standard of proof and procedural guarantees of asylum seekers. n addition to her research, she works as a lawyer and co-director of Freiplatzaktion Zürich, a legal advice centre for asylum and migration law. She is also a board member of the associations Pikett Asyl, Pikett Administrativhaft and Solidarité sans Frontières (SOSF).
Laura Rezzonico
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.
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.
Irina Sille
Annelise da Silva Canavarro
Dr. Annelise da Silva Canavarro (former Erismann) is a Swiss naturalized political scientist of Brazilian origin, interested in the intersection between international higher education, labor sociology, and interdisciplinary migration scholarship. In her publications, she has tackled different facets of academic precarity, defended critical approaches to international student mobility, and experimented with writing for gender, feminist, and anti-imperialist audiences. Her Ph.D. (University of Lausanne, 2023) proposed a new conversation between Marxist dependency and intersectionality theorists, attempting to convince both of the unexplored potential of the field of international student mobility and migration. She currently volunteers for the Freiplatzaktion Zürich. In the long-run, she remains deeply invested in the activities of the Research Network Globalization, Race, and Alterities within and beyond the University of the Swiss Association for Gender Studies and the SP Migrant:innen Biel.
Publications: https://www.annelisesilvacanavarro.com/
Robin Stünzi
Rulla Sutter
Ferenkeh Tarawally
Ferenkeh Tarawally is a Masters of Advance Studies Student at the University of Applied Science in Olten, Switzerland (FHNW-Olten). He holds a master’s degree in international relations and diplomacy from the Geneva School of International Relations and Diplomacy. Ferenkeh has completed studies in Switzerland to become a qualified migration specialist (Migrationsfachmann), studies which focuses on Swiss Migration history, policies and Integration process. His research work focuses on providing psychosocial care counselling services for the integration process for pre-trial detention children (juveniles).
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 from Ohio State University (USA). Her research focuses on questions at the intersection of citizenship, integration, noncitizen political rights, and public opinion and uses quantitative methods to analyze her research.
Gesa Teigelkötter
Gesa Teigelkötter is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the Laboratoire d’études des processus sociaux (LAPS) of the University of Neuchâtel with an interdisciplinary background in migration studies and psychology. She is also associated with the NCCR on the move. In her dissertation, she questions the production and boundary making of (un)deportability through health.
Carole Viennet
​
Maarja Vollmer
Maarja is a Doctoral Researcher at University of Neuchâtel within the project “Narratives of Crisis and Their Influence in Shaping Discourses and Policies of Migration and Mobility”. Her background is in sociology and she holds a Master’s degree on International Migration and Ethnic Relations from Malmö University in Sweden. Maarja has formerly carried out national and international research projects within the field of migration, integration, social cohesion and policy evaluation with both quantitative and qualitative approach. Before starting her PhD studies, she was working at the European Migration Network Estonian National Contact Point. Her research interests include migration governance, migration policy formation, securitisation of migration, and citizenship.
Michelle von Dach
Michelle von Dach is a social anthropologist with a background in political science too. Currently, she is a PhD researcher and lecturer at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on the experience of different forms of migrant im(mobility) and how these are connected to bordering practices, migration policies, and waiting. She conducted multisided ethnographic fieldwork in Italian border areas and a year-long ethnography in the Italian capital, Rome. Other topics included within her research are gendered aspects of irregular migration, ethical challenges in qualitative migration research, and the affective dynamics when researching in vulnerable contexts.
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).
Gina Wirz-Suárez
Gina Wirz-Suárez is a Colombian feminist and PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She holds the Doc.CH SNSF grant to carry out her project “Forced Migration and Transnational Activism: The Case of Colombian Women in Exile,” under the supervision of Graziella Moraes Dias da Silva (IHEID) and Eléonore Lépinard (University of Lausanne). Her current research interests focus on Forced Migration Studies, Social Movement theories and Gender Studies. For her Ph.D. dissertation, she analyzes the transnational political activism of Colombian women in exile living in Switzerland and Spain who participated in the Colombian Truth Commission between 2016 and 2023. By using ethnographic and feminist methods, she followed the resources and strategies women mobilized to position themselves and their agendas in these peacebuilding scenarios, particularly concerning the recognition of exile as an act of victimization from a gender perspective.
CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-wirz-suárez-a81184ba/
Anna Wyss
Anna Wyss is a social scientist interested in the various mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the experiences and state administration of migration. Theoretically, she approaches these topics from the perspectives of critical migration and border regime studies, the anthropology and sociology of law, as well as from intersectional perspectives. In 2019, she completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Bern. Her thesis examined the interrupted journeys of people who seek, but have little hope of obtaining, permanent residence status in European countries. Anna tracked their successive migrations, detentions, and deportations within and beyond the continent, exploring migrants' navigation of the European migration regime, their everyday resistance, and the impact of legal and economic precarity on their lives. The thesis was published as an open-access monograph by Bristol University Press. Anna currently works as a senior researcher at the Law Faculty in Bern on a socio-legal project focused on precarious housing in Germany and Switzerland. For more information, please visit her personal homepage.
Cristina Zamora-Gómez
Cristina Zamora-Gómez is a Doctor in Public International Law and International Relations from Sevilla University and a Doctor Assistant Professor at the University of Alicante. She has carried out several research stays in study and research centers of Universities in Peru, Malta, and Switzerland. She is now a visiting professor at the European Institute of the University of Fribourg. She has made various publications in the following lines of research: international protection, gender, asylum, migrant participation in Institutions; access to justice right; international custom. She is lecturer in the subjects of Public International Law; Right to asylum; European Union Law; International Criminal Law; International commercial law; in different Spanish and foreign universities. She has been awarded the Rosario Valpuesta National Research Award in 2019 and Research Award in Gender Equality by the University of Seville in 2020.
Contact: cristina.zamora@ua.es
Nesa Zimmermann
Elodie Zufferey
Elodie Zufferey is active in both communications and forced migration fields. She is a Communications Specialist, who holds a Master's degree in Communication and Economics, and has 10 years of professional experience within public institutions, international organisations and companies. Currently, she is enrolled in the Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies Master's programme from the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London. Between 2022 and 2023, she gained professional experience in asylum seekers’ legal counselling within Swiss federal centers and volunteered as a refugee camp support in Greece.
