Ms. Lisa Andersson is a research fellow and a member of the Migration and Development group at Maastricht Graduate School of Governance/UNU-MERIT. Her current research focuses on migration management and the migration-development nexus. Lisa has in the past eight years managed large-scale migration and development projects at the OECD, Maastricht University and the University of Gothenburg. Her work has focused on interrelations between public policies and migration, the economic impact of refugees on host communities, and the wellbeing impacts of migration and remittances in countries of origin. Her work has included a collection of quantitative and qualitative migration data in a large number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. She regularly conducts capacity building trainings with policymakers in developing countries. Lisa holds a PhD in Development Economics from the University of Gothenburg.
Paul Baumgartner is a Policy Analyst in the ICMPD Policy Unit. With an economist background, he has acquired sound knowledge and experience in the field of migration research. His recent research is focused on asylum responsibility-sharing among the EU Member States, analysis of asylum statistics and labour market integration of refugees. His academic interests involve asylum policies and quantitative methods. He is fluent in German, English and Spanish.
Anna has worked in the field of asylum since 1988 at the Swedish Migration Agency, in reception as well as in refugee status determination, for UNHCR in Asia and at the Migration Court of Stockholm for seven years where she headed the training in asylum law and trained nationally at the Judicial Academy. She holds a Master of Laws and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science (international politics). She has been a trainer nationally and internationally in asylum law for 15 years including at the Law Faculty of Uppsala University. Her focus in work has been on interviewing skills and on jurisprudence as part of informed decision making and training.
Judge Judith Gleeson has over 20 years of experience in migration and asylum law. She has been an Upper Tribunal Judge at the Asylum and Immigration Chamber of the United Kingdom since 2010. In 2014, she was nominated by EASO to advise the Moroccan Government on draft asylum, trafficking and migration laws. She has been chairing the UTIAC Research and Information Committee since 2010 and has been a Judicial Member of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission since 2005. She is a member of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ).
Gabor has been working in the field of asylum since 2000. After two years of working with the UNHCR, he joined the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (www.helsinki.hu), where he currently works as the director of the refugee programme and as an international trainer. Gábor’s research and advocacy work has been mainly focusing on evidentiary and credibility assessment, country information, gender and intercultural issues in asylum cases, as well as nationality and statelessness. He has conducted research and published a number of studies and articles on these issues while also being a reputable international trainer (with hundreds of training sessions conducted to asylum professionals on various continents).
Agnieszka Kulesa is an economist at CASE, where she specializes in the labour market, international labour migration and migration policies within and outside EU. During her international career, she gained extensive experience in working in the private and public sector with public servants, public officers, and policymakers. In her previous employment in 2017 –2018 at the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw she acted as Head of Migration Policy Programme. Between 2010– 2014 she worked for the Migration Policy Department of the Ministry of the Interior of Poland, where she was responsible for international cooperation in the field of migration, including cooperation within the framework of the Prague Process. She also worked for the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM). Her area of expertise encompasses: labour migration and labour markets, migration policies and their effects, and the future of work. She participated in several EU research projects on migration and labour markets, authored several related articles, and was a panellist in many events in public and private institutions.
Professor Rainer Münz was Adviser on Migration and Demography at the European Strategy Policy Centre (EPSC), the in-house think tank advising European Commission President J.C. Juncker during his time in office (2014-2019).
Prior to joining the European Commission, Rainer Münz was – between 2005 and 2015 – Head of Research and Development at Erste Group, a Central European retail bank headquartered in Vienna. He was Senior Fellow at the European think tank Bruegel (Brussels), the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI, Washington DC). He also worked as a consultant for the European Council, the OECD and the World Bank.
Until 2004, Rainer Münz had an academic career as a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1980-1992, and at the Department of Mathematics of Finance/TU Vienna, 2002-2004, as well as a tenured university professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, 1993-2003.
He also was visiting professor at the Universities of Bamberg, UC Berkeley, the American University in Cairo (AUC), Frankfurt/M., HU Jerusalem, Klagenfurt, St. Gallen (HSG), Vienna and Zurich. He currently teaches at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy in Vienna and the Central European University (CEU).
Emil Niculescu has over 24 years of experience in the field of migration and asylum. He graduated migration and border class at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy before starting to work as a return officer, also having attribution in combatting illegal migration. For four years, he worked for and coordinated the European integration unit, taking part in numerous projects and contributing to drafting legislation in the field of migration. In 2003, he started to work in the statistics area and in 2004, he was one of the founders of the first risk analysis unit in the area of migration, further on embarking the asylum issues. In the same year, he took the heading position of this unit and kept it ever since. He also served as a Director for strategic management a.i. for a period of almost two years. After that, he returned to his first love – risk analysis.
Elena Petreska is Anti-Trafficking Specialist at the ICMPD Anti-Trafficking Programme. Over the past 12 years, she has been involved in various anti-trafficking projects, aiming to enhance the transnational cooperation on trafficking cases, build capacities and support national authorities in developing their anti-trafficking response. Elena is also conducting qualitative research in various ICMPD initiatives
Carla Rojas Paz is a Migration Data Editor for IOM's Global Migration Data Analysis Centre in Berlin, Germany. At IOM she works primarily on the Global Migration Data Portal project but her experience spans the government sector, NGOs, and international organizations. Prior to IOM, she worked as a Senior Analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office where she evaluated a wide-range of government programs, including the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. She has also worked for a human rights organization researching stateless children of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, a social service agency where she facilitated the integration of refugee families, and the International Rescue Committee where she evaluated an interpreter services program that hired refugees. Her particular interests include applying social science research to strategic communications for policy. She holds a Masters in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelors in Journalism from the University of Florida.
Mr. Andrea Salvini is an independent advisor for Governments and International Organisations, a Research Fellow of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and teaches at the MSc Design of Social Protection Schemes at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS). Chief Technical Advisor, Migration and Governance Network at the ILO Regional Office for the Arab States in Beirut, Lebanon between 2013 and 2015. Previous experiences as a Research Associate at the University of Sydney, Labour Economist at the ILO Office for Viet Nam, specializing in labour issues and migration and as a Technical Expert on Employment and Labour Market Policies from 2005 to 2010 at the ILO Subregional Office for Central and Eastern Europe in Budapest, acquiring expertise on labour and skills development in transition countries. Andrea Salvini has worked for the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and evaluates large research projects on migration for the European Commission. He worked for the OECD in 2002-2003 on the Social Aspects of Sustainable Development, did his post-graduate studies at the Department of Economics of University College, London, and has advised more than 50 Governments throughout his career.
Enrico Tucci is a senior researcher at the Italian National Institute of Statistics. He has a PhD in demography, has been responsible for the Italian official migration statistics and currently works at the Population Census Division. He has been involved for more than 10 years in international cooperation activities as an expert in data management and migration statistics.
Professor
Barbora Vegrichtová is an Associate Professor at the Czech Technical University. Until recently, she served as Dean of the Faculty of Security and Law at the Police Academy of the Czech Republic. Her professional career started in 2000 at the Criminal Police and Investigation Service and continued at the Organised Crime Unit of the Czech Police. Since 2011, she has been pursuing an academic career focusing on radicalisation, extremism, terrorism, migration and identification issues.
Michele Vespe is a scientific officer at the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC), where he works for the Knowledge Centre on Migration and Demography (KCMD). He coordinates the activities of a team of researchers in transforming migration data into knowledge and scientific evidence for policymakers. This includes research in the fields of data integration, big data and innovative data sources on migration. He also manages the developments of the KCMD Dynamic Data Hub, a platform that allows and facilitates online analysis and time-series visualisation of multiple datasets on migration. Between 2011 and 2013 he was a Senior Scientist at the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation, between 2008 and 2011 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the JRC. He previously spent two years in the industry as a project engineer. He holds a telecommunications engineering degree from the University of Florence (2003) and a PhD in signal processing from University College London (2006).
Monika Weber joined ICMPD in 2009 and is currently a Senior Advisor in the Border Management and Security Programme. She started her career with the Czech Police in 1994 and was later seconded to the UN mission. Her portfolio ranges from border management, immigration issues and document security to asylum and combatting trafficking in human beings. Since 2003, she has been carrying trainings and delivering presentations in numerous international fora on border management