Advisory Board

Agnes Hars

Ágnes Hárs, PhD in labour economics, senior researcher at Kopint Tárk Institute of Economic Research in Budapest, Hungary, senior expert in the field of labour economics and labour migration. Her main research areas are labour economics, labour migration, and employment policy. She has led or participated in several national and international migration research projects, including a 10-country European comparative study on the elucidations of the migration process, temporary migration experiences between Europe and Asia, Hungarian emigration patterns, labour shortages and emigration of medical doctors, etc. Her national and international publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. She is a member of the editorial boards of international journals, a member of national and international professional societies, secretary of the Labour Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and vice-president of ‘Menedek’ Hungarian Association for Migrants. 

Thomas Huddleston

Thomas (PhD, Maastricht) is an international expert on migration, integration and diversity with over 15 years of transatlantic experience. He is recognized for his original data collection, indicators and policy evaluation. His 60+ publications investigate citizenship, political participation, inclusive education, refugee integration and sponsorship, legal migration, social policies and services for vulnerable and discriminated groups. He engages in mixed methods and participatory research, community leadership development and policy dialogue. He was part of the consortia running the Migration Research Hub, Global Citizenship Observatory, Transatlantic Migrant Democracy Dialogue and SIRIUS network on migrant education.

Peter Hupe

Peter Hupe is interested in the study of government-in-action. After his graduation in Political Science (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, cum laude) he was ten years in public service. In 1992 he got his PhD at Leiden University. With Erasmus University Rotterdam as institutional basis for more than three decades, he had academic affiliations in Leiden, Leuven, London, Oxford and Potsdam. Currently he is Visiting Professor at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute. His research regards the study of public policy processes, particularly implementation and street-level bureaucracy.

Francisco Javier Moreno- Fuentes

Daria Ana Pîrvu

Romanian born Daria Pirvu lives for 22 years in Belgium. Active in social and cultural inclusion of mobile EU citizens, applying non-formal educational methods, her educational and professional training applies to the profile of science and humanities. From Geography of populations/migration to human resources management and non-formal education of adults she promotes the connection between Romanians worldwide through projects that value tangible and intangible heritage, education, environment and culture. Co-founder of  Agora for Life in Gent, partner of EuropaNova school in Brussels, project manager and board member for ROMBEL, 2020 #ecasHOMEAwards winner, her linguistic facilities and professional background offered multiple partnerships with ETTW, BalkanTrafik Festival, focusing on mobility, identity, multiculturalism, gender-based violence, social/cultural inclusion of mobile citizens in the EU. She promotes the FARO principles, valuing the importance of local communities and their local heritage assets, providing possibilities for interpretation in relation to current societal challenges, when facing emigration.

Ana Radulescu 

(Photo: LG Adam)

Nora Ratzmann

Dr Nora Ratzmann has joined the German Center for Integration and Migration Research in 2020, first as a Research Fellow in the Department Conflict and Consensus; since July 2022, she is leading the qualitative stream in the research project "Support and Integration of Refugees from Ukraine", Department Integration, on the perspectives and needs of recently arrived Ukrainians regarding German state-funded social services, and coordinates the international research network "Forced Migrants from Ukraine in Transnational Europe".

At DeZIM, and in the context of research activities at the University of Tübingen, on the role of civil society in the social service provision for migrants, the Expert Council of German Foundations for Migration and Integration, on EU-Africa relations, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, IASS Potsdam, on societal change and administrative innovation, she has since been researching migrants’ access to state-provided social provision, health care or housing and the street-level bureaucracy.

Thorsten Schlee

Thorsten Schlee heads the Migration and Social Policy Research Group at the Institute Work, Skills and Training at the University Duisburg-Essen. He is also one of the PIs in a joint project of the Universities of Duisburg-Essen, Bochum and Dortmund that investigates the role of migrant organisations in the production of social protection. Thorsten has a background in political science and history and received his PhD with a work on scientific and democratic technics of producing "representations". He has researched and lectured in Düsseldorf and Cologne.

Thorsten’s ongoing research focuses on migration related social policies. He is particularly interested in the connection between welfare state transformations in the direction of a European workfare regime and its economised migration calculations. He asks how these state policies “hit the ground”, how local organisations such as integration offices, migration offices or welfare associations, implement and interpret policies and legal frameworks and how migrants on the other hand use these structures for their aims.