IRiS Staff

Dr Jennifer Allsopp

Dr Jennifer Allsopp

Birmingham Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Jennifer’s research centres on how people move and mobilise to support what they perceive to be viable futures for themselves, their families and their societies in the context of migration. Her most recent work explores the relationship between immigration control, welfare and wellbeing, with a focus on gender, aging, and the politics of membership and belonging. She is passionate about ...

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

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 Catherine Ruth Craven

Dr Catherine Ruth Craven

Research Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Catherine Ruth Craven is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, where she works on the ESRC-funded project MIGZEN - Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit.

Catherine’s research focuses on migration and diaspora governance, particularly how states engage with and discipline their emigrant populations, and the global and ...

Email
c.craven@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

Ceren Ozgen

Ceren Ozgen

Associate Professor in Economics

The Department of Economics

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 ...

Telephone
+44 121 414 46235
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 Iman Pertek

Dr Sandra Iman Pertek

Research Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

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 ...

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

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Stefano Piemontese joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity in in 2019, where he conducts research for the project RETRY: Resilience and Resignation among Transnational Roma and non-Roma Youths. His research interests are in the field of migration, mobilities, youth and minority studies. While using ethnography as the main approach to explore these topics, he is also an expert ...

Email
s.piemontese@bham.ac.uk

Dr Marisol Reyes

Dr Marisol Reyes

Research Fellow
Institute for Research into Superdiversity

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

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 organisers and volunteers around ...

Email
m.reyes@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 Annavittoria Sarli

Dr Annavittoria Sarli

Marie S. Curie Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Annavittoria Sarli joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS)in 2020 as a Marie S. Curie post-doctoral fellow. She specialises in migration and intercultural studies, and in qualitative research methods. Her research currently focuses on intercultural competence and second generations. Over the past years she has conducted research on the relation between migration and health, ...

Email
a.sarli@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

Nando Sigona is a social scientist with over fifteen years research and teaching experience in migration, refugee, citizenship and ethnic studies. He is the Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Professor Sigona’s work investigates the migration and citizenship nexus. ...

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

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Interdisciplinary Chair
Professor 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. Her early work was concerned with the effects of modern violence on the mind in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (The ...

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