Culture, Migration and Superdiversity

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 ...

Dr Burney is a scholar of religion with experience of working with British Muslim communities. Her research interests include ‘lived religion’ in the West, how individuals negotiate religious identities in post-secular societies and research approaches that tackle the increasing populism and division observed in multicultural societies.

Lillian Sol Cueva is an interdisciplinary academic with expertise in energy research, feminist studies and social science. Her research interests concern the role of socio-technical imaginaries in shaping energy systems, intersectional issues of gender, race, and class in the context of resource extraction, and participatory methods to do research and facilitate public participation. 

As ...

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 ...

Kelly is a Reader in Social Policy based in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. She is the Director of Global Engagement for the School of Social Policy. 

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Rana Jawad specialises in the social policies and welfare systems of the Middle East and North Africa region, focusing on broad questions about institutional and political change, programme design and the impact of these on poverty and inequality. She is especially interested in the policy and political dynamics (including policy transfer issues) among international actors and the donor ...

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. ...

Rodolfo (Rudy) Leyva joined the School of Social Policy in September 2021, as a Lecturer in Quantitative Methods.

Rodolfo is a behavioural-social scientist, with specialisms in cognitive sociology, political-economy, and media psychology. His primary and interdisciplinary research draws on leading theories of ideological hegemony, neurocognition, and enculturation, and employs online experiment ...

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 ...

Özlem Ögtem-Young is a Research Fellow and Research Theme Lead (Poverty, Precarity, Savings and Debt) for  the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM) within the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology, developing and undertaking research into issues of poverty, precarity and financial insecurity amongst socially and economically ...

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 ...

Miguel is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. In his work, Miguel investigates the impact of the social environment on people’s well-being and health, especially of those who face disadvantage in our societies.

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). ...