The University of Surrey in South East of England is one of three UK-based partners. The Surrey team contributes to PROTECT in a number of key areas and is led by Senior Lecturer of Politics, Dr. Alia Middleton. Joining her are Professor Theofanis Exadaktylos, Dr. Evgenia Iliadou and Dr. Carmen Caruso.

The Surrey team is co-leading the work in Work Package (WP) 5, surveying civil society organizations’ role in the process of international migration, seeking to understand how they shape policy, public narratives, and the practical implementation of the high concepts of the Global Compact on Refugees. They also contribute to PROTECT’s dissemination and engagement work (WP9) in close collaboration with the University of Bergen, the Ryerson University and The Open University.

In addition to their extensive contribution to PROTECT survey research, the Surrey team is also involved in the fieldwork of Work Package 4, which maps the ground level actors that are involved in the reception of migrants and asylum seekers in selected entry zones in France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, as well as South Africa and Canada. The WP4 researchers apply their ethnographic experience and expertise in investigating if and how the compacts on refugees and migration influence ground-level actors’ understanding of ‘vulnerability’, particularly related to gender and legal status, and if and how it changes how they cooperate to meet special needs. The Surrey team conducts their fieldwork in Greece.

Meet Alia Middleton

Dr. Alia Middleton is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Surrey. She has expertise in political participation, including interest group professionalization and policy engagement in European politics.

Middleton brings wide-ranging knowledge and application of quantitative research techniques – in particular questionnaire design, administration, and analysis – to PROTECT. Dr. Middleton will contribute to the work of Work Package 5.

Photo: the University of Surrey

Meet Theofanis Exadaktylos

Dr. Theofanis Exadaktylos is a Professor in European politics at the University of Surrey. He has been researching the Greek financial crisis and the aftermath of austerity politics on Greece for many years alongside studying the implementation of public policy reforms in the country. 

Exadaktylos is involved in the research of Work Package 4.

Photo: the University of Surrey

Meet Evgenia Iliadou

Evgenia is a Research fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey. Her research is an interdisciplinary self-reflexive ethnography which critically examines the historical development of the 2015 refugee crisis and the continuum of the politics of closed borders and violence in time and space.

Her research was carried out on Lesvos and focuses on the human consequences of the EU border regime upon refugees’ lives and the lived experiences of social suffering and border violence.

Since early 2000, she has worked as a social scientist for various International and Non-Governmental Organisations in detention centers and refugee camps on Lesvos and the Greek mainland. Her research interests focus on the continuum of institutional and structural violence, border violence and deaths, the refugee crisis, temporal violence, deterrence, and social suffering.

As part of PROTECT, Iliadou contributes to the fieldwork of WP4 in Greece.

Meet Carmen Caruso

Carmen Caruso (BA, MA , PhD) is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics, University of Surrey.  

Her research interests lie at the nexus of social, political, and area studies and her research work focuses on contemporary migration/mobility, citizenship, diversity and social change, drawing expressively from gender and postcolonial critique.  

Most of her activities are shaped by a concern for structural asymmetries and are driven by social justice and the forms of collaboration established throughout the years with a variety of stakeholders within and outside academia.  

She has published two books, contributed book chapters and authored articles for academic journals.  

PROTECT partners