Project team

Project lead

Professor Dr. Petra Bendel

Petra Bendel is a Professor for Political Science at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany and serves as head of the Research Unit on Migration, Displacement and Integration. She has been the General Manager of the international and interdisciplinary Center for Area Studies and is the Cofounder and Vice President of the Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nuremberg (CHREN). Prof. Bendel also serves as the Chairwoman of the German Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR) and as a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). She has been a member of the expert group of the German Federal Government on integration and of the Enquête-Commission on integration in the Bavarian Parliament. Prof. Bendel currently leads several research projects on refugee, migration and integration policies. She studied Political Science, Spanish and English Linguistics and Literature at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, worked as a lecturer at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Bilbao/Spain and as a researcher at the Institute for Political Science at Heidelberg University as well as the Institute for Ibero-American Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. She has held guest professorships in San José/Costa Rica, Halle and Vienna. Learn more…

Professor Dr. Hannes Schammann

Hannes Schammann is Professor of Migration Policy Analysis at the University of Hildesheim and head of the Migration Policy Research Group (MPRG). His research focuses on various aspects of migration policy, currently with a strong emphasis on local communities in Germany and Europe. Further research interests include discourses on solidarity and on deservigness/selectiveness in asylum and migration politics. He currently serves as a PI in four research projects and initiated the transfer office on migration policy. Prior to his position in Hildesheim, Hannes gained extensive practical experience at the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), and the BAG EJSA (social work for young migrants). He still works closely with many actors in the field and is frequently consulted on migration issues by governmental and non-governmental actors. He studied in Passau and Concepción (Chile) and holds a PhD – with a study on “ethnic marketing” – and a diploma in “International Cultural and Business Studies” from the University of Passau. Learn more…

Project research fellows

Dr. Christiane Heimann

Dr. Christiane Heimann is a Research Fellow at the University of Hildesheim in Germany, and a Visiting Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the US in the project Cities Managing Migration. She holds expertise as academic researcher and policy analyst in various topics of migration and integration. In these areas she has worked and published on EU policies, multi-level governance, labour migration, international recruitment and labour market integration, local policies in metropolises, smaller cities and rural areas, city networks and the design of funding as well as data management. Her academic work was released by international academic journals and book series. As a policy analyst, she has conducted studies and reports for the European Commission, the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency and the German Institute for Human Rights as well as for foundations, such as Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Learn more…

Janina Stürner-Siovitz

Janina Stürner-Siovitz is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Area Studies of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. She analyses migration governance in complex multi-level systems. Taking a bottom-up perspective, she focuses on the interaction between cities, states and regional/international actors in the realization of the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees as well as in EU migration and integration policy-making. Furthermore, she explores multi-level partnerships in urban mixed migration contexts on the African continent. She is a peer reviewer for the Knowledge Platform of the UN Network on Migration and a member of the UNHCR Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN), and the Cities and Human Mobility Research Collaborative of the Zolberg Institute. As a Visiting Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, she develops impact-oriented research in the Cities Managing Migration program. Learn more…