RESEARCHERS
UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
Önver A. Cetrez
Scientific coordinator of RESPOND
Associate Professor and lecturer in Psychology of Religion and Cultural Psychology at Uppsala University, is the Principal Investigator of the Swedish team and the coordinator of RESPOND. Dr. Cetrez has profound expertise in studies of migration, refugees, health and acculturation. He is also a member of the Regional Ethical Board in Uppsala. He has led two similar research projects, both financed by the Swedish Research Council, one among Iraqis in Sweden (2010-2013), the other among Syrians in Turkey (2014-2016). Dr. Cetrez held the position as Deputy Director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul during the years 2014-2016.
Soner O. Barthoma
Administrative coordinator of RESPOND
Independent researcher with a background in political science. Research fellow, project coordinator of the Erasmus+ Surayt-Aramaic Online Project (2014-2017) at Free University Berlin. Soner has broad research interest in various inter-disciplinary topics, amongst forced migration, governance and discourse theories, European politics, Turkish foreign policy, late Ottoman period and genocide studies, history of the modern Middle East and its political regimes, identity politics, cultural heritage and revitalization of endangered languages. He is board member of Inanna Foundation (NL) and Mor Ephrem Stiftung (DE); initiated and coordinated various international projects, and edited two volumes on the 1915 genocide, published various articles on identity, migration and integration related topics.
Valerie DeMarinis
Ph.D., Psychologist. Full Professor in Psychology of Religion and Cultural Psychology, Uppsala University. Gäst Professor in Public Mental Health at the Institution for Public Health and Clinical Medicine at Umeå University (Medical Faculty), Sweden. Research Professor in Public Mental Health Promotion, Innlandet Hospital Trust, Norway. DeMarinis has extensive experience in both research and clinical work with refugees and other migrant groups in the healthcare system in Sweden, in both mental health- and somatic contexts. In the clinical context, she is responsible for developing the meaning-making assessment framework, including existential meaning, used in mapping patient worldviews.
RESPOND_Karin Borevi
Associate Professor and senior lecturer in Political Science at Södertörn University and researcher at the Uppsala Religion and Society Research Centre (CRS), is a member of the Swedish team of the Horizon 2020 EU RESPOND project. She has long and profound experience in studying immigration, integration, citizenship, multiculturalism and the welfare state. She is leader of theme 1 “Religious and social change” within the Linneaus Center of Excellence and research program The Impact of Religion: Challenges to Society, Law and Democracy at Uppsala University and is part of the Oslo-based research project When poverty meets affluence: Migrant street workers in Scandinavia (Fafo, Norway).
Jennifer Mack
Postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University, and a researcher at the School of Architecture at KTH. She combines history, ethnography, and formal analysis to study social change and the built environment. Using her theory of "urban design from below", her forthcoming book investigates the collision between Swedish design norms and the built projects and spatial practices of Syrian Orthodox Christians in one town. Jennifer holds a PhD in architecture, urbanism, and anthropology from Harvard University and a March and MCP from MIT.
RESPOND_Mudar Shakra
PhD candidate in Psychology of Religion at Uppsala University; member of the Swedish RESPOND team. He has a law degree from Damascus University (2000-2006) and MA from Stockholm University (2011-12). He worked as a lawyer (2006-11) and as Senior Protection officer for UNHCR (2007-11) before emigrating from Syria to Sweden. In Sweden he worked in several positions related to the migration, refugee law and integration issues and as a research-assistant at Uppsala University in two research projects among Iraqi newly arrivals in Sweden and Syrian refugees in Turkey (2013-14).
Jenni Wirman
Political Science student at Uppsala University, is the Research Assistant of the Swedish team of the Horizon 2020 EU RESPOND project. She has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Uppsala University (2014-2017), and has experience in studying migration governance in the Swedish parliamentary context. Most recently she concluded an internship at the Afghanistan unit at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), where her main focus lied on education and empowerment issues.
UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN
- Sabine Hess (Principal Investigator).
- Alexander-Kenneth Nagel
- J. Eduardo Chemin
- Bernd Kasparek
GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY
- Umut Korkut (Principal Investigator ).
- Simone Baglioni
- Lena Karamanidou
- Kyle Taggart
- Daniel Gyollai
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY
SWEDISH RESEARCH INSTITUTE ISTANBUL
- N. Ela Gokalp Aras (Principal Investigator)
- Zeynep Sahin-Mencutek
- Elif Çetin
- Justyna Szalanska
ÖZYEGIN UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE
- Ginevra Cerrina Feroni (Principal Investigator)
- Veronica Federico
- Chiara Favilli
- Cecilia Corsi
- Silvia D’Amato
UNIVERSITY OF AEGEAN
INSTITUTE FOR URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH OF THE AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW
- Karolina Sobczak-Szelc (Principal Investigator)
- Agata Górny
- Marta Pachocka
- Monika Szulecka
- Anita Brzozowska
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
LEBANON SUPPORT
HAMMURABI HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATION, IRAQ
ADVISORY BOARD
- Daniel Tarschys (Prof. emeritus in Political Science, Stockholm University)
- Anders Bäckström (Prof. emeritus in Psychology of Religion, Uppsala University)
- Peter Scholten (Associate Professor, Erasmus University of Rotterdam)
- Murat Sömer (Associate Professor, Koç University, Istanbul)
Ethics Advisor
Hannah Bradby (Professor of Sociology, Uppsala University)
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme for the period 2017-2010 under Grant agreement No [770564].