IRiS Staff

Dr Jennifer Allsopp

Dr Jennifer Allsopp

Birmingham Fellow
Founder and Co-Chair, University of Birmingham University of Sanctuary
Co-Founder and Birmingham Lead, Transatlantic Fellows Program

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Jennifer’s work centres on how people move and mobilize to support what they perceive to be viable futures for themselves, their families and their societies in the context of migration. She is drawn to interdisciplinarity and often incorporates the humanities to inform the content and practice of her research. She is passionate about comparative studies in international migration and the ...

Email
j.c.allsopp@bham.ac.uk

Dr Gëzim Alpion

Dr Gëzim Alpion

Associate Professor of Sociology
Director of Employability for the School of Social Policy and Society

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Educated at Cairo University and Durham University, Gëzim Alpion lectured at the Universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield Hallam, and Newman prior to his appointment in 2002 in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He joined the Department of Political Science and International Studies in 2010 and the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology in ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3241
Email
g.i.alpion@bham.ac.uk

Dr Rachel Ayrton

Dr Rachel Ayrton

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Rachel Ayrton is a sociologist with expertise in research methodology and migration.  She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity here at Birmingham.

Rachel’s work centres around questions of power and agency, and how these are expressed and constrained in communities that are marginalised and oppressed.  She is particularly ...

Email
r.ayrton@bham.ac.uk

Dr Lisa Goodson

Dr Lisa Goodson

Lecturer

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Lisa Goodson is a lecturer in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology where she co-ordinates social policy research modules at post graduate level as well as teaching and tutoring on undergraduate modules in new migration. Lisa has been at the forefront of research exploring the experiences and consequences of migration in the UK and Europe. Common themes that cut across ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4993
Email
l.j.goodson@bham.ac.uk

Dr Irina Kuznetsova

Dr Irina Kuznetsova

Associate Professor

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Dr Irina Kuznetsova's research expertise includes areas of migration, forced displacement, health, and critical urbanism. Her recent projects focus on social consequences of population displacement in Ukraine, Russia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Japan, including mental health and well-being, and the impact of migration on rural communities.

Email
i.kuznetsova@bham.ac.uk

Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips

Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips

Senior Research Fellow, IRiS

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Laurence Lessard-Phillips is a Senior Research Fellow who joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) in May 2016. Her main research interests lie in the perceptions, measurement, and dimensionality of immigrant adaptation; ethnic inequalities in education and the labour market; the transnational behaviour across immigrant generations; and social inequalities and social mobility. ...

Email
l.lessard-phillips@bham.ac.uk

Dr Angelo Martins Junior

Dr Angelo Martins Junior

Assistant Professor in Sociology

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Angelo Martins Jr is an Assistant Professor in Sociology. He undertakes ethnographic research in the areas of difference, intersectionality, social inequalities and decolonial sociological approaches to contribute to debates on Migration, as well as on ‘Modern Slavery’. 

Angelo has carried out extensive research on how differences of ‘race’, class and gender, rooted ...

Email
a.martinsjunior@bham.ac.uk

Pip McKnight

Pip McKnight

Research and Impact Fellow

School of Social Policy and Society

Pip McKnight is a Research and Impact Fellow in the Institute for Research into Superdiversity where she is working on the reach and influence of the SEREDA project, led by Professor Jenny Phillimore. A registered midwife, Pip’s background supporting pregnant asylum seekers led her research interests in forced migration, gender and reproductive health. She is also skilled in facilitating ...

Email
p.mcknight@bham.ac.uk

Ceren Ozgen

Ceren Ozgen

Associate Professor in Economics

The Department of Economics

Dr Ceren Ozgen is an applied economist who works at the intersection of labour and urban economics. She received the Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship from the European Commission and a is research fellow at IZA. She has published extensively on impact of international migration, firm innovation and economic growth. Her recent research focuses on technological change, skills mismatch, green ...

Telephone
+44 121 414 7290
Email
c.ozgen@bham.ac.uk

Dr Anna Papoutsi

Dr Anna Papoutsi

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Anna Papoutsi is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2022-2025) at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. Her project, Border time: everyday temporal practices in Athens, Berlin, and Liverpool, aims to unveil, analyse and conceptualise the temporalities of border control and the politics of time involved in migration governance. Border Timeis designed around three urban ...

Email
a.papoutsi@bham.ac.uk

Dr Sandra Pertek

Dr Sandra Pertek

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the School of Government and School of Social Policy and Society
Senior Research Fellow

International Development Department

Dr Sandra Pertek is UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the School of Government and School of Social Policy, and Senior Research Fellow at the International Development Department (IDD) and the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham. She was previously Lecturer at the Institute for Global Health and Development, Queen Margaret ...

Telephone
0121 414 7232
Email
s.m.pertek.1@bham.ac.uk

Professor Jenny Phillimore

Professor Jenny Phillimore

Professor of Migration and Superdiversity

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Jenny Phillimore is Professor of Migration and Superdiversity. She is a world leading scholar in refugee integration, superdiversity and access to social welfare with a particular focus on public health.  Jenny is also an expert on Community Sponsorship.

She managers teams of researchers focusing on access to health, education, employment, training, and housing integration with a particular ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 7822
Email
j.a.phillimore@bham.ac.uk

Dr Stefano Piemontese

Dr Stefano Piemontese

Research Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Stefano Piemontese joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow working on the project Resilience and Resignation among Transnational Roma and non-Roma Youths (2019-2022). Currently, he is a Research Fellow and Member of the Executive Team for the project Improving the Living and Labour Conditions of Irregularised Migrant ...

Email
s.piemontese@bham.ac.uk

Dawn River

Dawn River

Lecturer in Social Work

Department of Social Work and Social Care

Dawn is Lecturer and Erasmus and Study Abroad Lead in the Department of Social Work and Social Care. Dawn is also based within the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) as the LGBT*Qi Lead and member of the teaching team on the Community and Practitioner Research Programme.

She is currently working on four research projects: ‘Queer Brexit: the migrant experience’; ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 2936
Email
d.h.river@bham.ac.uk

Dr Seb Rumsby

Dr Seb Rumsby

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Seb Rumsby is an interdisciplinary scholar with a wide range of interests including everyday politics, labour exploitation, undocumented migration, ethno-religious politics, grassroots development and non-national histories. Seb unites these diverse themes with an empirical focus on Southeast Asian worlds and people. Seb undertook his PhD at University of Warwick’s department of Politics ...

Email
s.rumsby@bham.ac.uk

Professor Nando Sigona

Professor Nando Sigona

Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement
Director of IRiS

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Professor Nando Sigona has over twenty years of research experience in the field of migration and forced displacement.

He is Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham, UK where he teaches sociology of migration, displacement and citizenship. He is the Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity(IRIS). ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 415 8030
Email
n.sigona@bham.ac.uk

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Interdisciplinary Chair of Humanities and Human Rights

Department of English Literature

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge’s work focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary literature, political theory, and history, Human Rights, and Refugee Studies, drawing on the interdisciplinary connections between literature, history, politics, law, and social policy.

Stonebridge’s early work was concerned with the effects of modern violence on the mind in the twentieth and ...

Email
l.j.stonebridge@bham.ac.uk