LAU | Relationships between Diasporas and Their ‘Homelands’ and Their Impact on the State, National Identities, and Peace & Conflict

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Alan Gamlen is Lecturer in Human Geography at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, Founding Editor of the new journal Migration Studies from Oxford University Press, and Lead Researcher on the ‘Diasporas and Emigration States’ Project, one of eleven projects within Oxford University’s Diasporas Programme, which he co-designed with Prof. Robin Cohen and Dr. Nick Van Hear. Alan’s research focuses on issues surrounding migration, diasporas and transnationalism, and in addition to his cross-country comparative work on state-diaspora relations, he has published and lectured on topics such as migration and development, highly skilled migration, global migration governance, international migration data, and methodology in migration studies. Alan holds a Doctorate in Geography from the University of Oxford, where he was a New Zealand Top Achiever Doctoral Scholar, based at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society. He subsequently held a Fellowship at Oxford University’s Department of International Development, and remains a Research Associate of its International Migration Institute. Alan has been a Monbukagakusho Scholar in Japan, and has also held visiting positions at the University of Sydney and Trinity College, Dublin. He has been an advisor and consultant to several governments and international organizations, including the Commonwealth Secretariat and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Thomas Faist is University Professor of Transnational and Development Studies in the Department of Sociology, Bielefeld University (http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/tdrc/ag_comcad). His research interests focus on international migration, citizenship, social policy and climate change. Recently, Thomas Faist published Beyond a Border: The Causes and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration, with Peter Kivisto (Pine Forge Press 2010). Thomas Faist co-edited, with Nina Glick Schiller, Migration, Development and Transnationalization: A Critical Stance (Berghahn 2010) and, with Rainer Bauböck, Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods (Amsterdam University Press 2010). His research efforts currently deal with “The Transnational Social Question” (International Sociology, 2009). Thomas Faist is deputy director of the Collaborative Research Centre “From Heterogeneities to Inequalities” in which he directs a project on informal social protection and co-directs a German-Turkish panel study.

Nicholas Van Hear is Deputy Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. With a background in development studies, he works on migration, refugees, conflict, development, diaspora, transnationalism and related issues, and has field experience in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. Before joining COMPAS when it was launched in 2003, he held senior research posts at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford (1990-2000) and at the Danish Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen (2000-2003). His books include New Diasporas (London: Routledge, 1998), The Migration-Development Nexus (Geneva: International Organisation for Migration, 2003), and Catching Fire: Containing forced migration in a volatile world (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

Hein de Haas is Co-Director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) of the James Martin 21st Century School and the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the linkages between migration and broader processes of human development and globalisation, primarily from the perspective of migrant-sending societies. He did extensive fieldwork in the Middle East and North Africa and, particularly, Morocco. He has published on a wide range of issues including migration theory, migration and development, remittances and transnationalism, integration, migration determinants, migration futures and the links between migration and environmental change. He has a PhD in social sciences (Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands), an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology and an MA (cum laude) in human and environmental geography (University of Amsterdam). He has taught migration theory at the University of Maastricht. Before joining IMI in 2006, he held researcher and lecturer positions at the Radboud University of Nijmegen and the University of Amsterdam and was a visiting fellow to the Forced Migration and Refugees Studies programme of the American University of Cairo. He acted as consultant or advisor to governments and international organisations including the UK Government Office of Science, EU, UNDP, UNRISD, IOM and Oxfam.