Professor Mukesh Kapila
As each day brings a new dimension to Europe’s catastrophic refugee crisis, The University of Manchester is able to offer considerable expert analysis on the crisis and the international community’s reaction to it.
The speakers below are experienced communicators, well used to providing quick and accessible commentary, explanation and opinion to the public. They cover various aspects of the crisis including migration, asylum, immigration, international development, international law and politics.
Experts on migration, asylum and immigration
- Dr Jonathan Darling is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography who can offer expert views on European migration and asylum, managing the migrant crisis in Calais, and possible solutions to the crisis that address the wider issue of refugee resettlement in Europe.
jonathan.darling@manchester.ac.uk - Professor Alice Bloch is an expert on undocumented migration, asylum policy and integration. She has done research exploring barriers to the labour market for refugees in Britain and exploring the lives and experiences of young undocumented migrants in England. She is also able to talk about what motivates undocumented migration, migrant routes into the UK and survival strategies in an increasingly punitive environment. alice.bloch@manchester.ac.uk
- Dr Bridget Byrne is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology interested in race and ethnicity in Britain and migration and citizenship. Her book Making Citizens: public rituals and personal journeys to citizenship was published in 2014.
bridget.byrne@manchester.ac.uk
International development experts
- Mukesh Kapila, CBE, is a Professor of global health and humanitarian affairs. After a career in medicine and public health, Professor Kapila held senior roles with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Overseas Development Administration and was a Special Adviser to the UN in Afghanistan and to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, before becoming the Head of the UN in Sudan. He is a veteran of humanitarian crises and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone.
mukesh.kapila@manchester.ac.uk - Dr Tanja Müller is a Senior Lecturer in International Development and one focus of her work is contemporary refugee populations and the quest for global citizenship. She can offer views on the European asylum system and possible political solutions to the current crisis; visual politics and media representations of asylum and migration issues; and wider geopolitical dynamics and the securitization of international development policies. She can also offer expertise on Eritrea, one of the countries in the limelight in the current crisis.
Tanja.Mueller@manchester.ac.uk