Professor Gerasimos Tsourapas FAcSS SFHEA

• Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), 2025
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), Advance HE, 2021
• PhD in Politics, SOAS, University of London, 2016
• MSc in Middle Eastern Politics, SOAS, University of London, 2012
• MSc in International Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2007
• BA in Economics and Political Science, Yale University, 2006

Gerasimos Tsourapas is 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of International Relations in the School of Government at the University of Birmingham. His research explores the international politics of migration, with a focus on how cross-border mobility shapes coercion, cooperation, and legitimation in world politics. His work often centres on the Middle East and the Global South, and contributes to broader debates on authoritarianism, symbolic power, and strategic statecraft.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies (Oxford University Press), a leading journal in the field. He previously served as Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), and as Treasurer of the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He also served as an elected Trustee of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), a British Academy research institute, where he was Acting Honorary Treasurer and a member of the Research Sub-Committee.

 Tsourapas currently leads an ERC-funded project on migration diplomacy and co-directs multi-year research initiatives on transnational authoritarianism, refugee return politics, and the securitisation of migration, supported by the European Research Council, Horizon Europe, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. His recent work has been published in journals including International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, International Migration Review, and the European Journal of International Relations. He is the author of The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press) and Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa (Manchester University Press), and his research has been recognised with awards from the ISA, APSA, and the Middle East Studies Association.

Tsourapas was previously Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, where he now holds an Honorary Research Fellowship. He serves as a Senior Fellow at the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at Tufts University, and has held visiting positions at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University; the London School of Economics and Political Science; Koç University; the American University in Cairo; and as an Academic Visitor at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

Born in Greece, Tsourapas holds a PhD in Politics and an MSc in Middle Eastern Politics from SOAS, University of London. He also earned an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Economics and Political Science from Yale University.

In addition to academic publications, he regularly engages with international media and policy audiences. His research has been cited in The Economist, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and he has provided expert advice to the OSCE, the OECD, and the International Organization for Migration.

 Across all of his work, Tsourapas seeks to integrate rigorous comparative research with a commitment to public engagement and teaching excellence. He has designed and delivered training for the United Nations University, led workshops with practitioners and policymakers, and supervised doctoral students working on migration, authoritarianism, and international cooperation.

Gerasimos Tsourapas is passionate about doctoral mentoring and has supervised five PhD projects to completion. He currently supervises five doctoral students working on migration, authoritarianism, and global governance, and serves on the External Advisory Board of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network EuroMedMig, the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on Migration.

He welcomes inquiries from prospective doctoral students interested in the following areas:

• Migration diplomacy and the international politics of mobility
• Refugee rentierism and forced migration governance
• Transnational authoritarianism and diaspora politics
• The politics and political economy of the Middle East

His current doctoral students are supported through a range of competitive scholarships, including ESRC studentships, College of Social Sciences awards, and international fellowships such as the TÜBİTAK–Horizon Europe BROAD-ER scheme. They are:

• Elena Habersky (2024–28) — Navigating Restrictions: How Sudanese in Cairo Contest the Egyptian-Sudanese Border
• Matthew Heneghan (2024–28) — Remittance Regimes: Migration Interdependence between Russia and Eurasia and the Comparative Effects on Political and Institutional Development
• Gülşen Doğan (2025–28) — Right-wing Populism and Political Power: A Comparative Study on Türkiye’s and Hungary’s Migration Diplomacy with the EU
• Dean Ross (2025–29) — Alternative Nationalisms and Immigration: A Comparative Study of Scotland and Catalonia
• Sondos Mahfouz (2025–29) — Migration Politics as Statecraft under Authoritarian Regimes: From Uncertainty to Power Consolidation

 Previously supervised doctoral students (primary or co-supervisor):

• Sultan Al-Khulaifi (2021–24) — Echoes of Peace: Qatar’s Manoeuvres in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (1995–2013)
• Giovanni Piazzese (2018–22) — The Evolution of the Egyptian State’s Emigration Policy: Transforming Neglect into Engagement
• Reem Alshamsi (2017–21) — Implementation of International Standards for Countering Terrorist Financing in Different National Contexts
• Wen-Yu Wu (2017–21) — Waiting, Hopes and Futures: Accessing Higher Education for Displaced Syrians in Lebanon and Jordan
• Ziad Abu Attiya Mustafa (2015–18) — The Causes of Palestinian Disunity, 1993–2014

Gerasimos Tsourapas’s research explores the intersections of migration, international relations, and global governance, with a particular focus on the Middle East and the Global South. His work examines how cross-border mobility functions as a tool of statecraft, and how governments, especially in authoritarian and postcolonial contexts, strategically manage migration for diplomatic, economic, and symbolic purposes.

He has pioneered the concepts of migration diplomacy, migration interdependence, and refugee rentierism, advancing theoretical frameworks that analyse the interplay between foreign policy, displacement, and international hierarchies. His research has been published in leading journals including International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and International Migration Review.

 Current Research Projects

ERC Starting Grant: Migration Diplomacy in International Politics (2022–27)
Principal Investigator
This project examines how states use cross-border mobility as a strategic instrument in international relations. It theorises migration diplomacy as a distinct form of migration power and explores its manifestations across historical and contemporary case studies in the Global South.

ERC Consolidator Grant: Disappearing Act – Reconstructing the Crime of Disappearances in Times of Violence (2023–28)
Co-Principal Investigator
This project explores how enforced disappearance is constructed, recognised, and contested across different authoritarian and post-conflict settings, with attention to transnational linkages and state accountability.

Carnegie Corporation Project: Securitisation Without Security (2024–27)
Co-Principal Investigator
This project traces how global narratives of migration securitisation shape international cooperation, institutional design, and power asymmetries in world politics.

Horizon Europe: De-Centring the Study of Migrant Returns and Readmission Policies (2022–25)
Co-Principal Investigator
A comparative project examining the symbolic, strategic, and institutional politics of return migration governance, with a particular focus on EU–Global South interactions.

Tsourapas’s past research has been supported by the British Academy, the Council for British Research in the Levant, the Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Libyan Studies, the International Studies Association, the Independent Research Social Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account, and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), among others.

Thematic Research Areas

Migration Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
Tsourapas is the author of Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa: Power, Mobility, and the State (Manchester University Press, 2021), which examines how states across the MENA region leverage migration to achieve foreign policy objectives. His research on migration interdependence received the 2017 Martin O. Heisler Award from the International Studies Association and has informed work by the European Commission and the OECD.

Transnational Authoritarianism and State Projection
He has extensively published on the international dimensions of authoritarian rule, including diaspora repression, cross-border surveillance, and coercion by proxy. He leads and co-leads projects on authoritarianism and enforced disappearance and has developed conceptual tools for understanding authoritarianism beyond the nation-state. His research has informed work by Freedom House, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UK Parliament, and Human Rights Watch.

Postcolonial and South–South Migration Regimes
In collaboration with Kamal Sadiq (UC Irvine), Tsourapas developed the concept of a transnational social contract to understand how states govern South–South migration corridors. He has also written on migration governance in postcolonial states, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. His first book, The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was awarded the 2020 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award by the International Studies Association.

Forced Displacement and Refugee Rentierism
Tsourapas coined the term refugee rentierism to describe how states commodify displaced populations for political and economic gain. Based on fieldwork in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, this research has shaped comparative debates on refugee-hosting strategies and was recognised with the 2020 VIADUCT Research Award (EU Erasmus+).