Irina Isaakyan Editor

Anna Triandafyllidou is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Prior to joining TorontoMet in August 2019, she held a Robert Schuman Chair at the Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. She is Editor of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. A sociologist by training, her interdisciplinary interests encompass issues of global governance of labour migration including irregular migration, asylum, highly skilled migration, labour market dynamics, identity and management of cultural and religious diversity, media and political discourses. Over the past 20 years, she has raised over 20 million Euro in research funds from European, international and national sources, and co-ordinated 30 international research projects in these research areas. Since beginning her tenure at CERC Migration, she has been awarded several major grants through Canadian funding agencies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), WES Mariam Assefa Fund, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Her current research team comprises over 30 senior research associates, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Her recent authored books include What is Europe (with R. Gropas, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2022); and Rethinking Migration and Return in Southeastern Europe (with E. Gemi, Routledge, 2021). She recently edited a volume on Migration and Pandemics (2022, Springer.) Her recent journal publications have appeared in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2022), Environment and Planning A:  Economy and Society (2022), Ethnicities (2022) International Migration (2021) and Nations and Nationalism (2020).

Irina Isaakyan is a Senior Research Associate at the Toronto Metropolitan University. Before coming to the TorontoMet, she was working in the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Prior to that, she was teaching English, Cultural Studies and Narrative Biographic Methods in Russian Universities. Holding PhD from the University of Edinburgh, UK, she was also engaged in post-doctoral research and teaching there on the topics of migrant identities and qualitative research methods. For several years, she has been also Associate Editor in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies and the Managing Editor of the IMISCOE Research Series. Irina is a qualitative and interpretive sociologist whose research connects to high-skill and elite migrations, gender and identity, diaspora and post-communist studies – and challenges traditional understandings of integration and agency. She has publications on post-communist space and identities, diaspora nationalism and high-skill migration in journals such as Symbolic Interaction, International Migration Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. She is publishing a book on the global elite migration of opera singers.

Simone Baglioni holds a Chair in Sociology in the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Parma, Italy. Previously, he was Professor of Politics in the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, and has held academic positions at the Universities of Geneva and Neuchatel in Switzerland, and Florence and Milan-Bocconi, in Italy. Professor Baglioni’s research interests include labour migration, asylum, changes in the labour market (unemployment and precarity), civic engagement and civil society. He acts as an expert and evaluator for the EU, the ESRC UK, and the Belgian National Research Council. He is currently the Principal investigator and the coordinator of the SIRIUS H2020 project, and the PI for the UK case of the MATILDE H2020 project, both focusing on migration issues. He has been a principal investigator also in the EU Horizon 2020 projects TRANSSOL (“Transnational Solidarity at the Time of Crisis”) and FAB-MOVE (“For a Better Tomorrow: Social Enterprise on the Move”). His publications include 7 books, numerous articles and chapters. Among the recent books Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Integration in European Labour Markets. A Comparative Approach on Legal Barriers and Enablers (co-edited with V. Federico) published in 2021 in the IMISCOE Research Series, and Social Policy and Social Innovation (co-authored with Stephen Sinclair, 2018).