IRiS Staff

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Dr Ceren Ozgen is an applied economist and she works at the intersection of labour and urban economics.  She has published extensively on impact of cultural diversity, international migration and firm innovation. Her recent research focuses on technological change and robotisation, skills mismatch and environmental pollution.

She is the UoB director of University of Birmingham - VU ...

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 ...

Dr Sandra Iman Pertek is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow and gender and social development specialist with over a decade’s experience in humanitarian, development and migration settings. Her research integrates intersectional and ecological approaches for developing religious engagement with the continuum of violence in forced migration. 

She is a mixed-methods researcher ...

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 ...

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 ...

Dr Marisol Reyes has been the research leader of the Community Sponsorship Scheme (CSS) directed by Professor Jenny Phillimore since 2017. The scheme was implemented by the British government to enable community groups to take on the role of supporting resettled refugees in the UK. 

Marisol has focused her research on the motivations and experience of the sponsorship organisers and ...

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’; ...

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 ...

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). ...

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 ...

Siân is a lecturer in social work, and conducts research in the areas of migration, sexual and gender-based violence, and child welfare and protection. She is deputy director of the Step Up to Social Work programme and a member of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS), a University of Birmingham research centre focused on the study of migration and diversity.