Faculty Member, Geography
University College London, Geography
About
I am a Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, where I teach in Geography, International Relations and International Development. I am also a member of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research.
I am part of an international team working on a project entitled Possibilities and Realities of Return Migration (PREMIG), funded by the Research Council Norway. This project is led by the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and as well as Sussex includes partners at the University of Bristol and Statistics Norway. PREMIG combines qualitative and quantitative research to look at ideas about return migration (as well as actual return) from the UK and Norway to five countries (Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Pakistan and Poland). I am leading the Afghanistan case study.
My research activities thus far have primarily been about the ways in which migrants (including forced migrants) adapt to the new environments in which they find themselves. This may be by maintaining connections across space to the place they migrated from, for example through transnational activities, and/or by building connections in their new place of settlement through integration.
My work at the University of Exeter (2010-2011), for an ESRC-funded project on organisations that support asylum seekers, represents a slight shift in focus from my previous work - from migrants themselves to the institutions and organisations that support and/or constrain their mobility and integration.
My ESRC-funded doctoral research used ethnographic fieldwork with Afghan refugees to examine the issue of how Afghans’ globalised connections (transnational ties and activities) can influence development in their country of origin, and how these connections interact with the way migrants negotiate membership in their cities and countries of settlement. My thesis suggests that rather than acting in opposition to each other, transnational and integration processes can be concurrent and even mutually supportive.
In addition to my academic research interests, I have also undertaken a variety of consultancy work; predominantly related to Afghanistan and Afghan migration but also on wider migration and development issues, and public health.
Contact Information
| IM: | Twitter: @oeppen |
