Professional background

With an MA in International Relations from Sussex University, Richard worked as a researcher on issues ranging from international development to local government finance. For nine years he was also an elected member of a city authority. Research for London boroughs in the 1990s led him to look at reception services for asylum seekers and then at wider migration issues.

From 2000 to 2008 he led work for the Mayor of London on immigration and asylum policy. Besides advising on immigration policy and its impact on London, Richard was responsible for developing a strategic approach to the integration of refugees and other migrants in Europe’s most diverse city.

Areas of expertise

• Preparing strategies for migrant integration at local level which engage communities, link services and coordinate agencies.
• Analysing data especially on population, employment and funding.
• Comparative international research.
• Policy work: analysis and development of migration and integration policy at all levels from local / national to EU.

Professional achievements

• Comparative study of systems for funding local capital investment (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 1996), helping to pave the way for steps by the UK Government to devolve more control over investment to local authorities.
• Destitution by Design report (2003) for Mayor of London on Section 55 – penalising ‘late’ asylum seekers – which fed into legal action establishing their right to state support.
• Led work to set up the Mayor’s Board for Refugee Integration in London (BRIL 2006), later the London Strategic Migration Partnership, and drafted London’s first integration strategy.
• Helped (2009-12) to develop peer review methodology for EU-funded networks IMPART and MIXITIES, enabling European public authorities and NGOs to work more effectively on migrant integration.

Other interests

Theatre and contemporary dance, poetry, cafés and hill-tops.

Professional background

Sue Lukes has worked freelance since 1996, but started in refugee resettlement in 1974 as a volunteer. Having gained a degree in Modern History (specialising in 17th century Wales) from Somerville College, Oxford, she found work running a resettlement and community development programme with Latin American refugees. From 1983 she worked in housing, variously running housing aid, information, research, policy and legal services in London, latterly for Shelter.

Areas of expertise

Sue offers training, consultancy and research principally around migrant and refugee integration. She is an acknowledged expert and trainer on housing and migrants’ issues, rights and options, and editor of Housing Rights Information. She has a longstanding interest in advice delivery and ethics, particularly for migrants including the undocumented. She has worked on and headed many evaluations, reviews, research projects, and currently heads the Strategic Legal Fund.

Professional achievements

• Developing new models of refugee resettlement and later housing aid delivery based on the emerging refugee and migrant community sector
• A report on the equality implications of being a migrant in Britain published by EHRC (research report no 19)
• Large body of work on migrants and housing, most recently work on Housing and Migration Network and a Migrant Housing Toolkit for East Sussex

Other interests

She chairs Music in Detention, is on the board of ARHAG HA Ltd and a small grant-giving trust, a member of the London Mayor’s Housing Equalities Standing Group, convenes her synagogue education group, offers advice and training to a range of community organisations, ran the Chile Committee for Justice that organised around the extradition of Pinochet and occasionally helps with holocaust education (her father arrived with the Kindertransport in 1939). She is bilingual in Spanish and English.

Professional background

Anna studied at Sussex and London Universities and has postgraduate and professional qualifications in teaching, education policy and management.

Areas of expertise

She works as a consultant in training and development, peer reviews, research and evaluation. She has expertise on refugee rights and the integration of new migrants in both the UK and Europe, recently focusing on improving migrants’ access to the labour market and to language learning.

Professional achievements

• Making a difference to adult learners as a teacher, Vice Principal and national policy lead, authoring guides on equal opportunities, access and quality in adult and further education, which are still in use.
• Leading campaigns to improve the rights and opportunities of asylum seekers and refugees across the UK as Director of Policy and Development and acting CEO of the Refugee Council.
• Setting up national projects on inclusive schools, integration, refugee teachers, refugee enterprise and community development.

Other interests

Printmaking, photography, sailing, world music, and acting as trustee for voluntary organisations working with migrant women in London and Uganda.

Professional background

Marian has a PhD and an MSc in Demography and 25 years of experience working in demographic, social and economic research. She has been an employee of public, private, academic and voluntary organisations and is now self-employed. Her career has included working for the London Research Centre and also the Greater London Authority (GLA) where she was responsible for the demography and statistics of migrant groups.

Areas of expertise

Marian has excellent data analysis skills, acquired through the analysis of a large number of surveys and complex datasets. She also has the ability to be creative and develop new methodologies to improve the information available on migrant communities.

Professional achievements

• Designing a population projections model projecting populations of ten ethnic groups in the 33 London boroughs.
• Developing new methodologies to estimate the number of refugees and language speakers in different areas.
• Author of more than 20 reports analysing the social and economic conditions of migrant and ethnic minority groups.

Other interests

Tennis, travelling and reading.

Professional background

Educated at Cambridge University and the University of Amsterdam and having worked at the Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research, Bastian is now a researcher at COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society) at Oxford University.

Areas of expertise

His expertise is wide-ranging but the analysis and evaluation of migration-related policy making and its implementation are his core areas. How policy making addresses dynamics of migration and how these policies affect individual population groups, communities and society as a whole are central questions in his research. His main research interests are migration processes (particularly irregular and transit migration); discursive formations of policy-making; control mechanisms and securitization regimes of migration.

Professional achievements

• Qualitative and quantitative research, including ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth expert interviews, large-scale surveys and framing/discourse analysis.
• He has carried out research in several EU states on migrant employment and other migration issues.
• His current work focuses the role of imaginations in constructing migration aspirations and intentions by people in countries such as Morocco, Senegal, Turkey and Ukraine.

Professional background

Steve trained as an economist, gaining a degree and masters from LSE. He undertook research at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University before becoming a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Keele. He subsequently worked for a variety of organizations, including the Local Government Association and London Councils, where he specialised in the areas of public expenditure and local government financing.

Areas of expertise

Steve has a detailed knowledge of local government and public sector funding, and has extensive experience of carrying out and commissioning economic and statistical analysis and modelling. He has undertaken a wide variety of research on economic and social issues.

Professional achievements

• developed a consultancy and has undertaken research for numerous organisations, including Local Government Futures, London Councils, the East of England Strategic Leaders Group, and other groups of local authorities;
• responsible for managing and directing local government involvement with central government departments on needs assessments and the distribution of grants;
• commissioned research projects on possible reforms to the funding of London local authorities.

Other interests

Watching Arsenal, cinema and travel.

Professional background

Maknun has a PHD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Cambridge. His first degree is in Economics. He is now a consultant who also teaches the Migration and Refugees module on Birkbeck’s Development Studies programme.

Areas of expertise

He has considerable knowledge of the UK’s voluntary sector and experience of and expertise in work with refugees, migrants, black and minority ethnic communities and on issues of poverty and development funding. His research interests include diaspora, remittance, and EU and UK refugee and migration and integration policy. His current research interest is in the area of young undocumented (irregular) migrants in the EU and UK.

Professional achievements

• Has sat on a number of grants and research committees.
• Has worked with Comic Relief, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Trust For London and other Charitable Trusts and local authorities, assessing, monitoring and evaluating funded grants, drawing up community profiles and undertaking research into varieties of issues.

Professional background

Fran has a degree in sociology, a postgraduate diploma in housing and a masters degree in refugee studies. She began working in the refugee sector in 1993 as a legal representative for Refugee Legal Centre. Since then she has worked for Refugee Housing Association in a community liaison role, and for the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner where she was Policy Manager leading on initiatives to support advice agencies.

Areas of expertise

Her background spans the asylum and immigration advice and support sectors, and she currently project manages the Strategic Legal Fund for Refugee Children and Young People. She has set up projects, and was involved establishing the Independent Asylum Commission and the NRPF Network. She has worked in organisational development, for example at AdviceUK, where she supported advice organisations and BAN (the Black and Ethnic Minority Advice Network). Fran also has experience in qualitative research.

Professional achievements

• Produced Into The Labyrinth: Legal Advice for Asylum Seekers in London for the Mayor of London (2005)
• Produced reports on refugee integration and legal advice for asylum seekers for the Mayor of London and, as a consultant, she evaluated various Home Office funded refugee projects.
• Overseas experience reviewing work on the Right to Food in India and worked as an Immigration Program Officer for the Canadian High Commission in London.

Other interests

Yoga, cycling, film.

Professional background

Ceri has a degree in Modern Languages from Oxford University, and is a graduate of Common Purpose. She has been the CEO of a legal centre for people with HIV/AIDS (with many asylum seeking clients) and has worked with a variety of human rights organisations and initiatives.

Areas of expertise

Ceri has an awareness and in-depth understanding of human rights frameworks and services for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. She has worked with many projects and programmes to review and evaluate them. Her areas of expertise are evaluation, strategic review and stakeholder consultation, and she also is a sought after facilitator.

Professional achievements

• Set up the charity Homeless International in the late 1980s while working in international development.
• Chaired the UK Forum on HIV and Human Rights for five years at the height of the AIDS Crisis in the UK.
• Researched and co-authored report The Destitution Trap for Refugee Action, and led on several complex reviews and evaluations of initiatives for refugees in the UK.

Other interests

Mountaineering, creative writing, theatre and walking her numerous dogs.

Professional background

After graduating from the University of Cambridge with a PhD in International Studies, Rachel worked at the Commission for Racial Equality (now merged into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission and IPPR on a range of social policy, equality and migration issues, focusing in particular on the integration of migrants from the EU accession countries.

Areas of expertise

Rachel’s areas of expertise lie in the field of unemployment and labour market disadvantage, particularly regarding ethnic minority and migrant groups. Since 2007, she has worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Employment Studies (IES).

Professional achievements

• Conducted social research and led on large-scale policy evaluations for clients such as the Department for Work and Pensions, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and the Home Office.
• Worked as a Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry into Migration and Social Cohesion.

Other interests

Outside of work, Rachel mostly likes to stay active, travel and eat! She also helps teach young people at her local parish of Southwark Cathedral.

Professional background

Richard joined the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) as EU Representative (2004-2007) from the Refugee Council, where he led on EU and international policy. He moved to the voluntary sector from broadcast journalism, by way of a life-changing year at the School for Social Entrepreneurs in 1998. He speaks fluent French and German, with a BA in Modern Languages from Oxford University.

Areas of expertise

In his recent work, Richard has developed expertise in European policy and practice in integration policy, responsibility sharing for asylum and forced returns, as well as in UK and EU policy on refused asylum seekers and other undocumented migrants.

Professional achievements

• He is completing a real-time evaluation of EPIM, a three-year €3m funding programme for migrant integration projects across Europe.
• He wrote At the end of the line: Restoring the integrity of the UK’s asylum system for the Still Human Still Here campaign and continues to support their dialogue with the UK Border Agency that has reduced destitution amongst refused asylum seekers.
• In Brussels he led a network of advocates from ECRE’s 80 member organisations and was the main NGO contact on asylum issues for EU institutions and media.

Other interests

Richard is an adviser to the Oxford University publication Forced Migration Review. He enjoys Brighton’s arts scene, dog walking and skiing.

Professional background

Rose’s professional life began in marketing for a specialist international publishing house (psychology and mental health) and since then she has worked as an English language teacher in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and now works freelance; writing, co-ordinating, marketing, designing and generally organising other people. She has a degree in literature and is currently working towards a postgraduate diploma in counselling, with a view to specialising in refugee counselling.

Areas of expertise

Marketing, communications, training and administrative/emotional support.

Professional achievements

• Set up English language training for Jordanian NGO the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature including creating and delivering language courses around the country.
• Trained inmates at Lewes Prison in active listening skills as part of the Samaritans Listeners scheme.
• Actively set up all the operational and marketing systems, from scratch, for a new health clinic Brighton and Hove Therapies Ltd and organised a highly successful launch night.

Other interests

Music (playing, listening to and dancing to), quirky films, travel, scuba diving, volunteering, Bikram yoga and seafront runs.

Professional background

Simon is a Professor for Social Science and Social Policy at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW). He holds a Diploma in Social Sciences and Social Work, an MSc in International Urban Planning and a PhD in Sociology. From 2000-2005 he was a research fellow and lecturer at Technical University Berlin, from 2006-2009 he held the position of Senior Policy Officer for Social Affairs at EUROCITIES, the network of Europe’s large cities, based in Brussels.

Areas of expertise

Urban development and migration, social policy and social cohesion

Professional achievements

• At EUROCITIES, he developed and led the “Inclusive Cities for Europe” partnership with the European Commission (DG Empl) to involve cities in the EU Social Inclusion Process.
• Engaged in numerous European and national research and mutual learning projects on migration, urban development and social cohesion.

Other interests

Simon plays the guitar in a band and enjoys swimming, going to the cinema and reading good books.

Professional background

Sarah has a PhD from Birkbeck College and is currently working as a field interviewer for NatCen Social Research, and a consultant on immigration and integration policy for clients such as the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government. Past clients have included the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Scottish Government and Migrants’ Rights Scotland. She previously worked part time as Deputy Director at the David Hume Institute (2008-2009), Policy Research Manager at the Scottish Council Foundation (2007-2008) and Policy Director at the Migrants’ Rights Network (2007).

Areas of expertise

• Immigration and integration policy
• Refugee Law in the Construction of National Identity (PhD thesis title)

Professional achievements

• Co-convening the MSc course ‘The Politics of Migration in Europe’ at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
• Leading a European Commission funded project ‘Moving Societies towards Integration’ (co-ordinating partner CJD Eutin, Germany)
• Delivering a high-level ‘National Conversation Roundtable on Migration Policy and Scotland’ for Mike Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, Scottish Government
• Sarah was lead researcher on the New Immigrant Communities Project; the resultant report was the most widely covered in ippr’s history and made a perceptible change in public perception and policy thinking around new immigrants.

Other interests

Coming soon.