PROTECT is conducted by an international consortium of 12 partner universities in Europe, Canada, and South Africa. The project is led by Professor Hakan G. Sicakkan on behalf of the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Read more about our partners below, their research interests, and the Work Packages they are involved in.
Hakan G. Sicakkan, the University of Bergen
Hakan G. Sicakkan is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Comparative Politics at Universitetet i Bergen, Norway. His areas of specialization include human rights, asylum policies, migration policies, models of citizenship and citizenship policies, European Union politics, European integration, and the European public sphere. Sicakkan is an expert on the EU’s and Member States’ laws, institutions, and policies regarding the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.
> Read more about the Bergen team
Photo: Eivind Senneset
Elspeth Guild, Queen Mary University of London
Elspeth Guild is Jean Monnet Professor ad personam at the Queen Mary University of London, UK, as well as at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Her interests and expertise lie primarily in the area of EU law, in particular, EU Justice and Home Affairs, including immigration, asylum, border controls, criminal law, and police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. She also researches EU privacy and data protection law and the nexus with human rights.
> Read more about the Queen Mary team
Photo: Kingsley Napley
Jürgen Bast, the University of Giessen
Jürgen Bast is Professor of Public Law and European Law at Justus Liebig Universität Giessen, Germany. Bast’s main research interests are European and international migration law and policy, including refugee and citizenship studies, and European constitutional law. He is one of the leading European experts in migration law. In the realm of public international law, Bast is interested in developing the public law of globalization, in particular theories of territoriality, human rights, and multilayered governance.
> Read more about the Giessen team
Photo: University of Giessen
Idil Atak, Toronto Metropolitan University
Idil Atak is a Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Atak has conducted research and published on the securitization of Canada’s refugee system and its implications for asylum seekers and irregular migrants.
> Read more about the Canadian team
Photo: Toronto Metropolitan University
Frank Caestecker, Ghent University
Frank Caestecker is a scholar in public management of migration and history at the Universiteit Ghent, Belgium. His expertise in migration management include management of labor migration, forced return, providing protection to refugees and citizenship policies.
> Read more about the Ghent team
Photo: Eric de Mildt/DeMorgen
Alia Middleton, the University of Surrey
Dr. Alia Middleton is Senior Lecturer in Politics, Co-Director of The Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE) and Undergraduate Admissions Tutor at the University of Surrey, UK. Middleton has expertise in political participation, including interest group professionalization and policy engagement in European politics.
> Read more about the Surrey team
Photo: The University of Surrey
Francesca Longo, the University of Catania
Francesca Longo is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Universita degli Studi di Catania, Italy. She is Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Public Policies and Ph.D. doctor in International Relations. Her research interests are focused on the EU migration policy, EU policy against organized crime, and the security policy of the EU.
Slavko Splichal, University of Ljubljana
Slavko Splichal is Professor of Communication and Public Opinion at the Univerza V Ljubljani, Faculty of Social Sciences, in Slovenia. His research interests include media, communication, and public sphere theories, public opinion, and communication research methods.
> Read more about the Ljubljana team
Photo: The University of Ljubljana
Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Lund University
Anamaria Dutceac Segesten is Associate Professor in European Studies at Lunds Universitet, Sweden. Her current research interests cover European politics, social media, and political communication, using a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and computational methods.
> Read more about the Lund team
Photo: Lund University
Jo Vearey, Wits University
Jo Vearey is Associate Professor at University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa. Vearey is working on migration and health in the southern African region and globally. With a background in public health, her work explores the relationship between migration, mobility, and health.
Raphael Heiberger, the University of Stuttgart
Raphael Heiberger is a Tenure-Track Professor at the Institute for Social Science at Universität Stuttgart, Germany. His main area of research is “Computational Social Sciences” (CSS), which combines various aspects of Social Sciences, such as Social Network Analysis (e.g., network dynamics, statistical modeling), Natural Language Processing (e.g., topic models) and Machine Learning (predictions).
> Read more about the Stuttgart team
Photo: The University of Stuttgart
Simon Usherwood, The Open University
Simon Usherwood is Professor of Politics & International Studies at The Open University, UK. Usherwood’s specializations include Euroscepticism, UK-EU relations, negotiation theory, and European integration theory. His contributions to the literature include theoretical and empirical pieces on the conceptualization and operationalization of Euroscepticism, both in the UK and beyond.
> Read more about Simon Usherwood
Photo: The University of Surrey
Our partner universities:
All PROTECT researchers:
