The Research Team
Researchers from the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre are collaborating with partners from institutions in Europe and Canada for the project on regional liveable diversity. Read more about the research team here.
Image: A virtual meeting with MMIC researchers and international partners in March 2020.
Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre
Associate Professor Rebecca Wickes
Rebecca Wickes is the Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC). She is an Associate Professor and Head of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. Her research focuses on demographic changes in urban communities and their influence on social cohesion and the concentration of social problems.
Rebecca is currently leading a collaborative research team from MMIC, Welcoming Cities and the Queensland State Government focusing on regional migrant settlement, to identify the critical factors for successful settlement for different migrant groups.
Associate Professor Alan Gamlen
Alan Gamlen is an Associate Professor and Head of Human Geography at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. He received his Doctorate (in Human Geography) from the University of Oxford as a New Zealand Bright Future Scholar. Alan’s research focuses on human migration and ethnicity, with special interests in the governance of international migration, diasporas and transnationalism.
Alan coined the team "liveable diversity" and organised the inaugural Liveable Diversity Summit in Melbourne in 2018. He is currently working on a major international project with Steven Vertovec (Max Planck Institute, Germany), Dan Hiebert (University of British Colombia, Canada) and Paul Spoonley (Massey University, New Zealand) that aims to develop and make public cutting-edge interactive data visualisation tools that allow both expert and non-expert audiences to explore, analyse, interpret and display big data on various dimensions of metropolitan super-diversity in major world cities.
Associate Professor Dharma Arunachalam
Dharma Arunachalam is a Social Demographer and Head of the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. He received his PhD in Demography from the Australian National University and was a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Monash University, he taught at the Department of Societies and Cultures, University of Waikato, New Zealand. Dharma’s current research focuses on fertility and partnering, social cohesion, international migration, family and household structures, population research, ageing and health.
Associate Professor Helen Forbes-Mewett
Helen Forbes-Mewett is a sociologist and Discipline Head of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. She is also Deputy Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. Helen's interdisciplinary background includes Sociology, Psychology and International Business, degrees all awarded by Monash University. Her work focuses on human security, migration, cultural diversity, and social cohesion, with a particular focus on international students.
Helen sits on the Regional Advisory Council of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, the Communities’ Council on Ethnic Issues and is a member of the Victorian Government Research Institute on Social Cohesion.
Dr Franscesco Ricatti
Francesco Ricatti is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies and coordinates the Italian program at the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University. His main research interest is in participatory and creative approaches to the study of transcultural urban communities. In this area, he has received research funding from the National Geographic, and the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. He has studied extensively the history of Italians in Australia, and his most recent book, Italians In Australia: History, Memory and Identity, was published by Palgrave in 2018. He is passionate about oral history and creative approaches to history, and is currently the President of Oral History Victoria and the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Oral History Australia Journal.
Rebecca Powell
Rebecca Powell is the Research Manager of MMIC and the Managing Director of the Border Crossing Observatory. She is also the project manager for the Network of Excellence. Rebecca has worked as a senior researcher on a number of irregular migration research projects hosted by the Border Crossing Observatory and has previous experience working as an international research consultant on trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons Project.
Rebecca is currently completing a PhD by publications part time titled ‘‘I still call Australia home’: The deportation of convicted non-citizens from Australia and the impact of policy and practice from a criminological perspective.’
Dr Charishma Ratnam
Charishma Ratnam is a Human Geographer and Research Fellow at the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. Her research spans across a number of areas, primarily focusing on refugee experiences, resettlement, inclusion, and home-making practices. Charishma is particularly interested in employing photographic, filmed, ethnographic, and walking methods with participants to analyse their past and present migration/resettlement experiences.
Charishma’s current research is focused on regional migration and resettlement in Australia. She also continues to work with Sri Lankan migrants and refugees to better understand their experiences of home-making during resettlement in Australia.
Associate Professor Marie Segrave
Associate Professor Marie Segrave is a researcher with the Border Crossing Observatory, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. She researches across a range of areas but her work is primarily concerned with migration, regulation, exploitation, and criminalisation.
Marie’s current research is focused on temporary migration and labour exploitation in Australia, temporary migration and family violence and human trafficking and modern slavery.
Professor Jane Wilkinson
Jane Wilkinson is Professor in Educational Leadership, Faculty of Education at Monash University, Associate Dean Graduate Research and an adjunct in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University. Her research examines issues of social justice and equity through the lens of educational leadership, with particular foci on refugee education and leadership as practice/praxis. Jane has published widely in the areas of ethnically diverse women and leadership, refugee students and theorizing leadership as practice/praxis.
Erasmus Universiteit, The Netherlands
Professor Peter Scholten
Peter Scholten is Professor of Public Administration, specialising in the Dynamics of Migration and Diversity Policies, at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. His research focuses on the governance of migration and migration-related diversity, multi-level governance, comparative public policy, and the relationship between knowledge and power in the field of migration. Peter is director of IMISCOE, Europe’s largest academic research network on migration, integration and social cohesion. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative Migration Studies and associated editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. Peter is also the coordinator of the Master of Governance of Migration and Diversity (a cooperation of Leiden University, Delft University, and Erasmus University Rotterdam), coordinator of the Erasmus Migration & Diversity Institute, and external collaborator at the Migration Policy Centre in EUI Florence.
Currently, Peter is leading several international research projects, including 'Theorising Urban Diversities', a project funded under the Erasmus Initiative Vital Cities and Citizens, on the 'diversity of diversities' in cities.
Angelique van Dam
Angelique van Dam takes great pleasure working as the senior network officer for the research platform IMISCOE, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Where she is also a researcher and lecturer at the department of Sociology and Public administration as well as a coordinator for the bachelor honours programme at the Department of Psychology and Pedagogical sciences.
Her research focuses on how local practitioners enact the multiplicity of dominant concepts in migration, diversity, and refugee integration discourses. To do this, she works together with several municipalities, asylum layers and street-level bureaucrats engaged with migrant services in the Netherlands. Angelique uses multi-method approaches, most notably qualitative methods like policy-analysis, focus groups, interviewing and observation, network analyses and Q-methodology.
Angelique likes to bridge scientific skills with the knowledge and experiences in the field, that she has acquired over the last ten years as a social worker, for Vluchtelingenwerk (refugee agency) and Slachtofferhulp Nederland (Victim support organization), specialized in post-traumatic stress and trauma care. This allows her to connect science with practice and organize interesting projects. In this matter, strong computer skills allowed her to develop and stimulate innovation in the ways science is practised and trains others to organize academic (online) events and build a digital infrastructures to support knowledge sharing worldwide. Angelique is passionate about social projects and strives for further inclusive and innovative development.
Ryerson University, Canada
Professor Anna Triandafyllidou
Anna Triandafyllidou is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University, Toronto. She has held teaching and research positions at the University of Surrey, the London School of Economics, the CNR in Rome, the EUI and the Democritus University of Thrace. She was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at New York University in 2001, and a Colston Fellow at the University of Bristol. She serves as national expert in the OECD Network of International Migration Experts and acts as an evaluator of research projects for the European Research Council (Advanced, Starting and Consolidator Grants), the Research Framework Programmes of the European Commission, the European Science Foundation, and several national ministries, research agencies and Universities in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK. She has also worked as an evaluator for DG Home policies on migrant integration and was consulted by the European Parliament on high skill migration policy reform in 2016.
Her main areas of research and teaching are the governance of cultural diversity, migration, and nationalism from a European and international perspective. Over the past 15 years, she has raised approximately 12 million Euro in research funds from European, international and national sources, and co-ordinated 30 international research projects in these research fields.
Associate Professor Zhixi Zhuang
Dr. Zhixi Zhuang is an Associate Professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Ryerson University. She’s also a Registered Professional Planner. Her research explores how immigrant settlement affects city landscapes and municipal policies and planning. She has been conducting mixed-method and arts-informed research in various immigrant suburbs across the Toronto Region. Her research addresses the importance of adopting equity-based approaches to engage immigrants in decision-making and support inclusive community-building. The research findings provide empirical evidence to help inform policymakers and planning practitioners of community perspectives. One of her research outputs is a 25-minute documentary entitled “Globurbia: Suburban Place-making Amidst Diversity” which can be accessed via this link.
Michelle Nguyen
Michelle Nguyen is a Research Technician at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Ryerson University. She holds a BA in History and International Development Studies (Trent University) and an MA in Immigration and Settlement Studies (Ryerson University). During her internship with the Migration Policy Research Division at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, she contributed to several chapters of its flagship publication, the World Migration Report 2020.
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany
Professor Steven Vertovec
Steven Vertovec is the Founding Director of MPI-MMG and Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnology at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. He was previous Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Director of the British Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, and Senior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford.
Steven coined the concept "super-diversity" and his research interests include globalization and transnational social formations, international migration, ethnic diasporas and contexts of urban diversity. He has acted as expert or consultant for numerous agencies, including the Expert Council of German Foundations on Migration and Integration, the UK government’s Cabinet Office, National Audit Office, Home Office, Department for International Development, Department of Communities and Local Government, the British Council, the European Commission, the G8, World Bank and UNESCO.
Dr Sakura Yamamura
Sakura Yamamura is Postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity. With her expertise in migration studies, urban and economic geography, her work focuses on the spatiality of migrant-led diversities in global cities, such as Frankfurt and Tokyo. Applying both quantitative and qualitative methods, she works on the geographical localization and conceptual concretization of transnational spaces, shedding new light on social-spatial urban transformations induced by the interaction of different transnational actors.
University of Bologna, Italy
Associate Professor Pierluigi Musaro
Pierluigi Musarò is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Italy. He is Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at the New York University. He is the author of several papers in the field of migration and border, media communication, cultural sociology and sustainable tourism.
Pierluigi is the European Coordinator of Atlas of Transitions, a project focused on the potentialities arising from the contemporary migration phenomenon and seeks new ways of experiencing public space and the cohabitation of European citizens and newcomers through art. He is principal investigator for several major international projects, including The Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies, an interdisciplinary network of experts from six universities in Australia and Europe and recently secured Horizon 2020 funding to undertake a three-year project on Investing in 'Welcoming Spaces' in Europe: revitalizing shrinking areas by hosting non-EU migrants (2020-2023).
Dr Elena Giacomelli
Elena Giacomelli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology and Business of Law at the University of Bologna. She is now working on environmental change and migration dynamics. She obtained a PhD, conducting an ethnographic research on social workers with asylum seekers and refugees. In order to anchor her research to practice, she worked for two years as a social worker with asylum seekers and refugees with the Association Centro Astalli. Her research and publications focus on social work with asylum seekers and refugees, migration dynamics, ethnography, cultural sociology. She has conducted many studying and working experiences abroad. In 2018 Elena was a visiting research fellow at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). In 2016 she took an internship in the Australian Population and Migration Research Center (University of Adelaide). She conducted her Master dissertation in the Third World Studies Center, in The Philippines, focusing internally displaced people due to environmental change. During her Masters, she spent one semester in the Metropolitan University of Prague, where she took part in the research project “Current Migration to Europe: Research of Smart Population Dynamics”. In 2014, she was a Bachelor exchange student at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Melissa Moralli
Melissa Moralli is Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna. She holds a Phd in Sociology and Social Research focused on social innovations intended as bottom-up processes and practices initiated by civil society actors. She is visiting scholar at CRISES (Centre de Recherche sur les Innovations Sociales, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada), IPK (Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, USA) and CRISES Redifined (University of Jyväskylä, Finland). Her research interests are: social innovation, migration and sustainable consumption. She is researcher in the project “Atlas of Transitions. New Geographies for a Cross-Cultural Europe” (https://www.welcomingspaces.eu/), where she co-curated the summer school “Performing Resistance. Dialogues on Arts, Migration and Inclusive Societies” and is currently researcher for the project “Welcoming Spaces. Revitalising Shrinking Areas by Hosting Non-Eu Migrants” (https://www.welcomingspaces.eu/). She is author of the book (2019) “Innovazione sociale. Pratiche e processi per ripensare le comunità” (“Social innovation. Practices and Processes to Rethink Communities”), FrancoAngeli, Milan.