Doctoral researchers
Doctoral student researchers are at the heart of the SCMR research community. We are privileged to have a large and diverse group of outstanding PhD students working on a huge variety of migration-related topics.
Humanity Wall, Ghent, Belgium (Photo: Paganelli, 2018)
SCMR doctoral researchers
Migration is an interdisciplinary subject of study. Sussex’s Migration Studies PhD programme allows students to explore connections between different disciplinary approaches in one of the most vibrant interdisciplinary migration research centres anywhere in the world.
Students in Migration Studies at Sussex typically have supervisors in different academic departments and often in different schools, allowing broad connections to be drawn. Seminars, workshops and other events organised by SCMR offer further opportunities for discussion and exchange across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
For an indication of the huge variety of topics our doctoral researchers work on, have a look at the list below. If you would like to study for a PhD with SCMR please see the links on the teaching and supervision page for how to apply.
“It is a great environment to learn about migration topics as well as to be in touch with many different researchers (from other doctoral and early career researchers, to professors).” VÍTOR LOPES ANDRADE
Researching asylum claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity
Selected current doctoral researchers
Read about what just some of our current PhD researchers are working on.
- Camila Monteiro Pereira
What school are you in? Global Studies
What is the title of your thesis?
Envisioning alternative paths: an inquiry into future-making practices within migratory communities in the Amazon region of Roraima
What’s it about?
My aim is to investigate how migrant groups in the city of Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil engage in collective future making processes. My focus is to analyse how a diverse group – Venezuelans and indigenous migrants - develop strategies to reframe their perceived connectedness by joining cultural associations as an alternative route from institutionalised help and in anticipation of an imagined desirable/undesirable future. I chose to investigate indigenous migrants and Venezuelan migrants because first I am personally involved with one of the cultural associations that support these groups activities and because I believe it is important to consider different aspects of migration to better support them. In the case of my research, I explore how Venezuelan’s migrants and indigenous migrants organize activities that are informed by visions of desirable and undesirable futures.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
After being involved in assisting Venezuelans refugees and migrants in Roraima, Brazil in 2018 I understood that a movement of people that has no precedent was taking place. I was drawn to understand why and how entire indigenous groups were leaving indigenous lands in Venezuela to settle in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America. I think this movement deserve more attention considering that these group leave their land to maybe never come back. In addition, this movement represent a challenge for Estate policy once there is not a special status for foreign indigenous migrants in Brazil.
Email: cm863@sussex.ac.uk
- Jo Hills
What school are you in? Global Studies
What is the title of your thesis?
Analysing intersecting power dynamics in Trans* refugees’ experiences of UK border practices
What’s it about?
My research focuses on trans* refugees experiences of navigating the UK border system as well as the relationships between cisnormativity, transnormativity and the wider enforcement of racialized gender that occurs in contemporary UK border practices. In doin, this, I hope to critically interrogate the policies that structure trans* people’s experience of claiming asylum in the UK and as well the ways said policies are transversed and resisted by trans* people. Theoretically my work draws on a combination of strands of within trans* studies and sits at the disciplinary overlap between critical border studies and wider traditions of queer and trans migration research.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
I was frustrated with the ways the academic literature approaches the relationship between transness and borders and believed in the need for research that attempted to understand the governance of transness in UK border practices by engaging with the perspectives of trans* people who experience them. More generally, I am interested in ways academic and activist traditions of trans* political thought have conceptualized the state’s regulation of gender normativity and practices of resistance to this.
Email: jh2038@sussex.ac.uk
- Cecilia Manzotti
What school are you in? Law Politics and Sociology (LPS)
What is the title of your thesis?
Unknown nationality? The determination of the nationality status and possible statelessness of asylum-seekers and refugees in Europe
What’s it about?
My research is about nationality status determination and statelessness identification in the context of asylum procedures in Europe, with a particular focus on Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The determination of the nationality, or lack thereof, of asylum-seekers is a key component of assessments of applications for international protection, and has important consequences that stretch well beyond the asylum procedure. Establishing an asylum-seeker’s nationality status may prove difficult when the person does not submit any valid identity or travel documents, is stateless or at risk of statelessness. My research aims to shed light on an overlooked aspect of asylum procedures—nationality status determination— and identify gaps, deficiencies and challenges involved in the determination of the nationality status of asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as good practices and opportunities for improvement. I hope that the evidence produced by my research may contribute to the improvement of nationality determination and statelessness identification in the context of asylum procedures in Europe. In my research, I adopt a socio-legal perspective and rely on a review of primary and secondary sources, as well as questionnaires and interviews with different actors involved in asylum and statelessness determination procedures in Europe.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
I am passionate about migration, and before starting my PhD I worked for several years in different areas of migration, including refugee protection, research on smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons, statelessness prevention and eradication. Working in refugee status determination, I developed a keen interest in the nexus between displacement and statelessness and the intersection between refugee law and statelessness law. I decided to pursue a PhD in law to explore this further and nurture my curiosity.
Read an example of Cecilia’s work at the
Email: c.manzotti@sussex.ac.uk
- Eman Alatawi
What school are you in? Media Arts and Humanities (MAH)
What is the title of your thesis?
The representation of migrants in the UK and Saudi Arabia press: A cross-linguistic corpus assisted discourse analysis
What’s it about?
The thesis focuses on the media representation of migrants’ issues. Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays some specific experiences, groups, communities, topics or ideas based on certain values or ideological perspectives. My thesis aims to examine the portrayal of migrants in the UK and Saudi Arabian media in order to explore the involvement of three linguistic features through the media’s representation of migrant topics; these features are: the use of names, metaphors and collocations to describe migrants by the press in the UK and Saudi Arabia, along with considering the impact of these depictions.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
Most studies that analyse media content have addressed migrants’ plight in the UK, Europe and the US, but few have considered the Middle East. Thus, there is a need to cover the portrayal of migrants by public media in countries such as Saudi Arabia, as there is a lack of comparative research. There is a critical need for studies that focus on the press in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, a country that is experiencing immigration at a tremendous rate. Such a study could help to shed light on immigration issues in the Middle East in general, and in Saudi Arabia particularly, specifically in comparison to the situation in Western countries.
Email: ea486@sussex.ac.uk
- Arunima Shandilya
What school are you in? Global Studies
What is the title of your thesis?
Lived Experiences of Pakistani-Hindu migrants in India: narratives from migration to citizenship
What’s it about?
The study is on Pakistani-Hindus' migration to India post-1990s. The research engages with how different social locations of Pakistani-Hindu migrants shaped their pre-migration life in Pakistan and process of resettlement in India, where differences were reproduced by the dominant communities on both sides of the border and how they held on to their identities as well as demonstrated certain aspects of those identities in places where they wanted to distinguish themselves from the local population.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
The right wing movement in India, specifically from 2014, has personally been a very unsettling experience. However, given the nature of religions in South Asia, even within different religious communities there is no homogeneity. There is caste and class barriers and enablers in each action taken. At the same time, having grown up in Delhi, partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 is still more than just a historical event. While islamophobia is on a rise, there is also a debate between good and bad Hindus. This got me interested into studying about an incongruous identity- Pakistani-Hindu, who are struggling to make peace between their own religious identity versus how the Indian society views their migration and religious belonging.
Email: A.Shandilya@sussex.ac.uk
- Vítor Lopes Andrade
What school are you in? Global Studies
What is the title of your thesis?
Asylum based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI): an intersectional approach to experiences of asylum claimants and refugees in London
What’s it about?
Most studies on asylum on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity focus on the legal perspective, particularly the refugee status determination process. In my thesis I am going beyond this legal approach, focusing on the lived experiences of asylum claimants and refugees in London.
What motivated you to do your PhD on a migration topic?
I have been working on this topic (SOGI asylum) for seven years. I did my master’s dissertation on this topic in Brazil, where I have also worked for an NGO. Since the beginning my aim was to put into dialogue migration and refugee studies with gender and sexuality studies.
Read an example of Vítor’s work in the
Email: v.adrade@sussex.ac.uk
Completed doctoral theses (2010-2024)*
The list below includes links to over 80 completed doctoral theses. Our doctoral alumni can be found in universities, research centres, international organisations, non-profit organisations, and more, across the world.
- 2024
Francisca Silitonga
Susie Ballentyne
Mariagiulia Grassilli
Catherine Donaldson
Akua Twumasi-Anokye
- 2023
Daina Grosa
Nathali Arias
Chu-Chun Yu
Nasreen Akhter
Clelia Compas
Alex Fusco
Marianela Barrios Aquino
Caterina Mazzilli
- 2022
Debbie Samaniego
Kristina Ilieva
Jae Hyun Park
Emma Soye
- 2021
Isilay Taban
Colleen McNeil-Walsh
Millicent Ayeh-Danquah Koomson
- 2020
Thabani Mutambasere
Esra Demirkol Colosio
Bashair Ahmed
Pattraporn Chuenglertsiri
Anna Wharton
Md Farid Miah
- 2019
Ireena Nasiha Ibnu
Rachel Pauline Larkin
Alia Noor
Joniada Barjaba
- 2018
Nabeela Ahmed
Idil Akinci
Dora Isabel Martins Sampaio
Eva-Maria Egger
Amy Clarke
Rachele Bezzini
Cecilia Poggi
Reinhard Schweitzer
Marlon Anthony Bristol
Lorena Guzman Elizalde
Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson
- 2017
Birce Demiryontar
Eveline Odermatt
Soumyadeep Banerjee
Markus Roos Breines
Jonathan Sward
Carmen Guadalupe León Himmelstine
Susanne Melde
Jill Ahrens
- 2016
Chrysoula Karli
Katie Wright-Higgins
Sajida Zareen Ally
Maxmillan Martin
- 2015
Farai Jena
Tom Chambers
Wen-Ching Ting
Katie McQuaid
- 2014
Barbara Johnston
Jade Cemre Erciyes
Erica Consterdine
Kalle Hirvoven
David Rubyan-Ling
Vesselina Ratcheva
Kirat Randhawa
Elisa Pascucci
Katherine Nielsen
Yacine Korid
Debbie Humphry
- 2013
Linnet Taylor
Dorothea Mueller
Maria Abranches
Vanessa Iaria
Gunjan Sondhi
Franziska Meissner
Ines Hasselberg
- 2012
Daniela DeBono
Canan Ezel Tabur
Francesca Conti
Christina Oelgemöller
Kerstin Schmidt-Verkerk
Christopher David Smith
Cora Mezger
Wael Mansour
Katrin Maier
Anusree Biswas-Sasidharan
Diana Mata-Codesal
Giuseppe Scotto
Nadine Voelkner
- 2011
Zana Vathi
Maria Josefina Perez Espino
Janine Teerling
- 2010
Anna Arnone
Prosper Asima
Caridad T. Sri Tharan
Benjamin Zeitlyn
* This may not be a full list, as doctoral researchers are spread across multiple departments in the University. If you, or one of your supervisees, are missing, please get in touch with the SCMR team.
