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Hannes Schammann is Professor of Migration Policy Analysis at the University of Hildesheim and head of the Migration Policy Research Group. 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 Research and Transfer Office for 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.

Danielle Kasparick (née Gluns) is head of the Research and Transfer Office for Migration Policy at the University of Hildesheim. Between September 2012 and December 2018, she had been employed and has completed her PhD at the University of Münster, at the professorship of European Social Policy and Comparative Political Science (Prof. Dr. Annette Zimmer). Her research interests include (forced) migration and integration in the German and European multilevel governance system. Moreover, she has done research on housing policy and urban development in growing cities. She has conducted research stays in Washington, DC, Vienna and Siracusa (Sicily).

Zeynep Aydar is a research assistant in the project "Integration in Rural Areas of Baden-Württemberg" and a doctoral candidate at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her dissertation project focuses on the field of education and integration of young refugees at the local level. Previously, she worked at the ILS - Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development. She studied Sociology and Architectural Culture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey (B.A.). During her studies, she spent a semester abroad at Goethe University Frankfurt. She holds a double M.A. degree from the Global Studies Programme from Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg and FLACSO Argentina. She spent another semester abroad at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

Katharina Euler is a researcher within the project "More than four walls". Previously, she worked as a researcher in the project "Match'in - Pilot project for the placement of asylum seekers with the help of an algorithm-based matching system" and gained several years of practical experience by working in public administration in the area of migration and diversity management. She studied political science and sociology at the University of Rostock and Aarhus University (B.A.) as well as international migration and intercultural relations at Osnabrück University (M.A.).

Clara Hoppe is a program manager at Land.Zuhause.Zukunft. and a member of the Migration Policy Research Group at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Hildesheim. She studied Integrated European Studies (B.A.) at the University of Bremen and Petrozavodsk State University and subsequently Global Politics and Gender Studies (M.A.) in Göttingen and Vienna. She is responsible for internal networking and communication In the program Land.Zuhause.Zukunft.

Marlene Neumann is a program manager at Land.Zuhause.Zukunft and a member of the Migration Policy Research Group at the Institute for Social Sciences. She studied International Development Studies at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands and participated in the Erasmus Mundus Master's program in International Migration and Social Cohesion at the universities of Amsterdam, Deusto (Bilbao), and Osnabrück. In her doctoral research project at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), she focuses on Welcome Centers in Germany. From 2015 to 2023, she worked first as a consultant and then as the manager of the Welcome Center Heilbronn-Franken.

Anna Werning is a researcher within the project „More than four walls“. Previously, she studied International Cultural and Business Studies at the University of Passau and the University of Victoria (B.A) as well as International Migration and Intercultural Relations at the University of Osnabrück and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (M.A.). In her master thesis, she explored mechanisms of solidarity towards refugees in rural areas.

Christin Younso is a research assistant in the collaborative project „Future for refugees in rural regions of Germany”. Prior to that she worked for the research project „Studium nach der Flucht? Angebote Deutscher Hochschulen für Studieninteressierte mit Fluchterfahrung – Empirische Befunde und Handlungsempfehlungen“. Her work and research interests focus on local integration and migration policy, such as the conception of integration policy in rural areas on EU, federal and local level. Her doctoral thesis deals with political participation in rural areas.

She studied Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the Bilgi Universität Istanbul and the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Franziska Ziegler is a research associate of the Migration Policy Research Group. She worked in the project SOLDISK – Discourses on solidarity in the context of migration and Two worlds apart? Comparing local integration politics in urban and rural municipalities. Prior to joining MPRG, Franziska was a researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights, working for the research network of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (FRANET). She studied political science and international law at Maastricht, Amsterdam and Vancouver. During her studies she gained experience as a research and editorial assistant in both fields of study and interned with an NGO, the German Foreign Office and the European Commission.

Agnes Ziegler is a program manager at Land.Zuhause.Zukunft and a member of the Migration Policy Research Group at the Institute of Social Science. Previously she worked as a project coordinator at KommMit e.V./ Psychosoziales Zentrum Brandenburg, where she was responsible for district coordination. She gained a BA in Intercultural Communication at University of Technology Chemnitz and a MA in the dobule degree program European Master in Migration Studies at University of Osnabrück and Linköping University (Sweden).

Julia Gramsch is program manager at Land.Zuhause.Zukunft and a member of the migration policy research group at the Institute of Social Science at the University of Hildesheim. Previously she worked as a social worker in various public administrative departments with the focus on migration. She gained a BA in Social Work with main focus on international and intercultural social work at HAWK in Hildesheim and an MA in international migration and intercultural relations in Osnabrück. Julia Lisa Gramsch acquired practical experience abroad and at home among others in journalistic and social fields.

Johanna Caroline Günther holds a Bachelor degree in cultural studies and political sciences from Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, as well as a Master degree in European studies from Freie Universität Berlin. She is a programme manager at Land.Zuhause.Zukunft and a doctoral candidate in political sciences at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Before joining the Migration Policy Research Group, she worked on issues related to national and international migration for the German Institute for Human Rights, the German Corporation for International Cooperation and the Robert Bosch Foundation. Johanna Günther was a researcher at Otto-Suhr-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin and a project assistant at the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions in Brussels.

Christiane Heimann is a Post-Doc at the University of Hildesheim in the project “When Mayors Make Migration Policy”. From 2016 to 2017, she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Studies of Societal Issues at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). She was a PhD student at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences in Germany from 2013 to 2016 and a scholarship holder of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation. Her doctoral thesis focused on chances and constraints to steer intra-EU labor mobility to match immigrants to specific labour market needs of member states. In the framework of her PhD thesis, she conducted research stays at the migration research group GRITIM at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Spain) in 2014 and at the Migration Research Unit at the University College London (UK) in 2015 to carry out her fieldwork. From 2011 to 2013, she held the position of a Teaching and Research Assistant at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (Germany). In 2013, she visited the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) for a teaching period. She studied European Studies in Social Sciences at Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg (Germany) and the Universidad de Salamanca (Spain).

Felix Maas is a researcher within the project "Match'in - pilot project for the placement of refugees with the help of an algorithm-based matching process". Previously, he worked as a mobile educational consultant for refugees in a state-financed project in Berlin and he was an associated member of the DFG-Research Training Group "Innovation Society Today. The reflexive creation of novelty" at TU Berlin. He studied political science and history at TU Dresden (B.A.) as well as political science and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (M.A.).

Tobias Wittchen studied Educational Science at the University of Hildesheim. He worked for three years as a doctoral fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences in sociology. He is currently a research assistant in the project "Two Worlds Apart: Local integration politics in urban and rural municipalities" (35%) and research associate in the 2477 DFG-Research Training Group "Aesthetic Practice" (65%) at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Hildesheim.

Swantje Kleint, student assistant in the project More than four walls

Hannes Sander, student assistant

Björn Steinführer, student assistant

Dianne Opitz, student assistant in the project Land.Zuhause.Zukunft.