Professor at the University of Birmingham and Director of IRiS

Jenny Phillimore is Professor at the Institute of Applied Social Studies of the University of Birmingham and Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IriS). She has researched widely in the fields of migration and superdiversity and over the past decade she has managed teams of researchers focusing on access to health, education, employment, training, and housing integration with a particular focus on integration and organisational change in the UK and EU. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has advised local, regional, national and European Government. She is also an investigator at the Third Sector Research Centre where her focus is on social networking and civil society actions and the impacts of grassroots community activity with a specific interest in migrant communities.

Professor at University of Milan Bicocca

Gian Carlo Blangiardo is Professor of Demography and director of the Department of Statistics at the University of Milan Bicocca. He is member of the European Commission’s group of experts in Demography, of the Scientific and Technical Board of the Region of Lombardy (social affairs), of the National Observatory on Family, of the Scientific Board of the ISMU Foundation, of the Lombardy’s Regional Observatory for Minors, of the Regional Observatory on Social Exclusion. Since 2001 he coordinates the Regional Observatory on Integration and Multiethnicity.

Associate Professor at Central European University, Budapest and Deputy Program Director at IZA

Martin Kahanec is Associate Professor at the Central European University, Budapest, and Deputy Program Director at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA), Bonn. He is also Co-founder and Scientific Director of Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), Bratislava. His main research interests are labour and population economics, ethnicity, migration, and reforms in Central Eastern European labour markets. He has held several advisory positions and leading roles in a number of scientific and policy projects with the World Bank, the European Commission, OECD, and other international and national institutions. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 2006 from the Centre for Economic Research (CentER), Tilburg University, the Netherlands, with his thesis “Social Interaction and the Labour Market: Essays on Earnings Inequality, Labour Substitutability, and Segregation.” During his doctoral studies, he spent several months as a Marie-Curie Fellow at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) of Université Toulouse 1 in France and the European Centre for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES) of Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

Professor at the University of Turin and Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Centre – EUI, Florence

Alessandra Venturini is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Turin and Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) at the European Univeristy Institute (EUI), Florence. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the European University Institute, and has held senior academic positions at the Universities of Florence, Bergamo, and Padua. She has been Visiting Professor at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), at Brown University and at the International Institute of Labour Studies of the ILO, Geneva. Her research work led her to conduct joint projects with the OECD Migration Section, the World Bank, the European Commission Migration Program and the CEPR Migration Research programme. She is a fellow of IZA, CHILD, FIERI, and an active member of IMISCOE. Professor Venturini’s research interests concern labour economics, with a focus on the assimilation of migrants in their receiving country and their effect on labour market and innovation in European countries. She has also conducted extensive research on the effect of remittances and of highly skilled migration in sending countries as well as on circular and irregular migration.

Senior Policy Analyst at the European Policy Centre

Yves Pascouau is senior Policy Analyst and Head of the European Migration and Diversity Programme at the European Policy Centre (EPC), Brussels. He has researched and published widely on EU and national immigration, asylum and integration policies. His latest book, “Which Integration Policies for Migrants? Interaction between the EU and its Member States”, co-edited with Tineke Strik, was published in June 2012 by Wolf Legal Publishers. He has participated in various EU projects and has also been a national expert for several networks such as the Free Movement of Workers Network and the Odysseus Academic Network. Before joining the EPC, he was researcher at the University Libre de Bruxelles, where he conducted a large-scale survey on migrants’ integration requirements. He also worked for 10 years as a researcher at the University of Pau (France) where he obtained a PhD in Law in “EU Migration Policy. From Schengen to Lisbon”. During the academic year 2011-2012, Yves was appointed “Maître de conference suppléant” at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is also closely following studies on asylum issues conducted by the Centre Charles De Visscher pour le Droit International et Européen (CeDIE) at the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Emeritus Professor at University of Milan

After receiving his M.A. in Economics from Bocconi University of Milan and his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, Alberto Martinelli started teaching at the University of Milan, where he became full professor of Economic Sociology in 1980 and of Political Science in 1987. Between 1987 and 1999 he was Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Science of the University of Milan. He also taught Sociology at Bocconi University, Milan and Political Science and Sociology in various foreign universities, among which the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, New York University, University of Valencia, Ain Shams University in Cairo and the Saint Petersburg State University. Between 1998-2002, he was appointed President of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He is member of the Executive Committee of the International Social Science Council.

General Director for Integration Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Integration and Europe of the State of Hessen, Germany

Walter Kindermann is doctor in psychology. From 1974 to 1978 he was Senator for justice, Berlin, creating and leading a therapy-centre for drug addicts in the prison of Berlin-Tegel. From 1979 to 1983 he was head of youth research department at the Technische Universität, Berlin. From 1983 to 1988 he lead an NGO including 30 institutions (residential therapy, counselling institutions, a school for addicts, … ) and 250 members of staff in Frankfurt am Main (www.drogenberatung-jj.de). Between 1989 and 2009 he worked for the Hessian Ministry of Social Affairs, where he was respectively responsible for health-politics and then Head of Department for Integration Policies Social Affairs, Labour Market Policies. Since 2009 he is Director-General for Integration at the Ministry of Justice, Integration and Europe of the State of Hessen.

Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam and IMISCOE Coordinator

Rinus Penninx has been Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam since 1993. He founded the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) at the University of Amsterdam in 1993 and served as the Institute’s Director until October 2005. From 1999 till March 2009, he has also acted as European Co-Chair of International Metropolis. In April 2004, he became Coordinator of the European Commission-funded Network of Excellence IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe). In April 2009 he founded its independent follow up: the IMISCOE Research Network for which he continues to work as Coordinator. For many years, Rinus Penninx has written on international migration, the settlement of migrants and related policies. Most of his present research work is on immigrant organisations, on migration and integration policies at the EU level and on local integration policies.