Below is a list of Rutgers faculty whose research or teaching activities relate to refugees and migration.
RUTGERS–CAMDEN
Cati Coe
Associate Professor
Rutgers Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Cati Coe is a sociology professor whose research projects concern the way ideas and discourses gain currency in and become routinized by institutions—whether in school curricula, immigration laws, or new forms of elder care—and how people experience these institutionalized discourses and routines through their perspectives and habits. She has authored or co-authored many publications, including The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality and Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective.
Joanne Gottesman
Clinical Professor
Rutgers School of Law
Joanne Gottesman directs the Immigrant Justice Clinic, a student-led law office that represents clients in immigration matters. She practiced housing and immigration law at the Legal Aid Society in New York and her areas of expertise include child migration, U.S. Immigration policy and poverty law. Before attending law school she lived and worked in China for three years. In 2009, she organized a guide under a grant from the Defending Immigrants Partnership funded by the Open Society Institute of the George Soros Foundation that helps New Jersey courts determine which crimes are likely to endanger a client’s immigration status in the United States. Along with Professor Randi Mandelbaum, she leads an embedded Learning Abroad course to Central America, Child Migration and U.S. Immigration Policy, that examines factors leading to the recent surge in Central American children coming to the U.S. border alone.
RUTGERS–NEWARK
Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia
Professor
School of Public Affairs and Administration
Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia's research focuses on the politics of immigration and anti-discrimination, security issues, racism and xenophobia, extreme-right wing movements, immigrant integration, urban racism, and European policies. Among her publications include How Does it Feel to Be a Threat? Migrant Mobilization and Securitization in the United States and Europe.
Jorge Contesse
Professor
Rutgers School of Law
Jorge Contesse is a scholar of international human rights law and comparative constitutional law. His work focuses on and the judicialization of international law and on the interaction between domestic constitutional actors and international and regional human rights regimes.
Kyle Farmbry
Dean
Graduate School–Newark
As the global refugee crisis challenges countries around the world, the dean of the Graduate School-Newark, Kyle Farmbry, has embarked on a multi-faceted investigation of the issue. Malta has long been a hub of the refugee crisis and to this day the country’s integration policy is trying to catch up. With the support of a Fulbright fellowship, Farmbry visited Malta from September to December of 2016 to assess the complexity of the situation. He met with refugees, non-governmental organizations, aid groups, and the Maltese government. For more on this research, visit https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/dean-farmbry-researches-refugees-malta.
Jamie Lew
Associate Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Global Urban Studies/Urban Systems Ph.D.
Rutgers–Newark College of Arts and Sciences
Jamie Lew's research areas include sociology of education, immigration and international migration, and race and ethnicity. Her research examines how ethnic and social networks impact social mobility and identities of children of immigrants in changing urban and suburban contexts. She has also worked in the field of international development, education reform, and refugee programs in various countries in Asia.
Randi Mandelbaum
Clinical Professor
School of Law
Randi Mandelbaum has devoted her career to working with children and families. She is the founding director of the Child Advocacy Clinic, which provides representation to foster children, undocumented immigrant children, and low income children with disabilities. Along with Professor Joanne Gottesman (Rutgers School of Law–Camden), she leads an embedded Learning Abroad course to Central America, Child Migration and U.S. Immigration Policy, that examines factors leading to the recent surge in Central American children coming to the U.S. border alone.
Tim Raphael
Director
Rutgers–Newark Center for Migration and the Global City
Professor, Department of Arts, Culture, and Media
Rutgers–Newark College of Arts and Sciences
Migration and its consequences may well be the defining characteristic of the contemporary world. Understanding the local causes and effects of contemporary migration requires studying the global flows of people, information, and capital. Tim Raphael is a director, producer, and adapter who has developed over fifty new American plays and oversees the production of Newest Americans, a Rutgers–Newark collaborative production profiling the lives of the newest Americans based in Newark, New Jersey, a city shaped by migration.
RUTGERS–NEW BRUNSWICK
Ousseina Alidou
Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures
School of Arts and Sciences
Professor, Department of African American and African Studies (Rutgers–Newark)
Ousseina Alidou is an African scholar and a theoretical linguist whose research focuses mainly on the study of women’s orality and literacy practices in African Muslim societies; African Muslim women’s agency and gender justice; African women’s literatures; gendered discourses of identity and the politics of cultural production in African Muslim societies.
Carolina Alonso-Bejarano
Instructor, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Carolina Alonso-Bejarano's research interests lie in the intersection of decolonial feminism and migration studies. She co-teaches a course, Introduction to Latino Studies, which examines some of the central themes that shape the diverse experiences of Latino populations in the United States, including migration histories, Latino labor markets, race, and more.
Gyan Bhanot
Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
School of Arts and Sciences
Gyan Bhanot's research interests are in translational medicine, viral evolution, population genetics, yeast genetics and ribosome biology. He teaches Introduction to Computational Biology for Physicists, which focuses on areas of evolutionary genetics, including human migration, phylogeny, disease association studies and patterns of mutations.
Douglas Blair
Professor, Department of Political Science
Professor, Department of Economics
School of Arts and Sciences
Douglas Blair is a professor of political science and economics. His research and teaching interests include microeconomic theory, industrial organization, and formal methods in political science. He teaches Inequality, an economics course on refugees and migrants,
Rebecca Davis
Associate Professor
Director, Center for Global Social Work Studies
School of Social Work
Rebecca Davis's practice interests include case management practice globally, global social work education, child protection system strengthening in low and middle income countries, strengthening the link between global social work and social work with immigrants and refugees within the United States, and online social work education. She teaches Global Social Work and Social Development, a graduate course that explores global social work and the application of social work methods to vulnerable groups within today’s global context.
Ali Chaudhary
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
School of Arts and Sciences
Ali Chaudhary's research interests include international migration, political sociology, and organization studies. He teaches and writes about nonprofit organizations, immigrant politics, and ethnic entrepreneurship. Prior to Rutgers, he held a Marie Curie Early Career postdoctoral fellowship with the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. He teaches a special topics course, Global Mobility, Inequality, and Social Change.
Dafne Duchesne-Sotomayor
Lecturer, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Dafne Duchesne-Sotomayor co-teaches a course, Introduction to Caribbean Studies, which covers the diverse histories, cultures, and forms of thinking of Caribbean societies.
Darius V. Echeverría
Lecturer, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Darius Echeverría co-teaches a course, Introduction to Latino Studies, which examines some of the central themes that shape the diverse experiences of Latino populations in the United States, including migration histories, Latino labor markets, race, and more.
Lydia Franco
Lecturer
School of Social Work
Lydia Franco teaches Latinos, Cultures, Community and Social Welfare, a graduate course that provides an overview of Latino peoples in the United States.
Suzy Kim
Professor, Korean History
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
School of Arts and Sciences
Suzy Kim began teaching Korean Studies at Rutgers in 2010. Her manuscript Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 won the James B. Palais Book Prize in Korean Studies from the Association for Asian Studies in 2015. Covering the immediate post-colonial period of North Korean history from 1945 when Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule to 1950 before the start of the Korean War, the book focused on the local people's committees and mass organizations that were spontaneously organized and later centralized, reconstructing the beginnings of North Korean society through a micro-level study of everyday life. Her research interests include critical theory, gender studies, and oral history. Outside the academe, she has been an advocate for human rights and peace in Korea as Korea Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA, advisory board member for Truth Foundation (Seoul, Korea), and executive committee member of Women Cross DMZ.
Elektra Kostopoulou
Lecturer, Modern Greek Studies Program
School of Arts and Sciences
Elektra Kostopoulou's research and publications explore concepts of administration that pertain to religious diversity, local sovereignty, centralization, and federalism, all the way from the late-Ottoman Empire to the European Union. She teaches Refugees and Migrants, which covers the genesis of the recent refugee and migrant movements from Syria and the broader region through Europe and the complex dynamics that have shaped the issue. She also leads Refugees and Migrants in the Eastern Mediterranean, a service-learning course in Leros, Greece, where students can engage with locals and refugees.
Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Associate Professor, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Nelson Maldonado-Torres' research interests include comparative critical and decolonial theorizing, theories of race and ethnicity, decolonial feminism, phenomenology, and social and political philosophy. He co-teaches a course, Introduction to Latino Studies, which examines some of the central themes that shape the diverse experiences of Latino populations in the United States, including migration histories, Latino labor markets, race, and more.
Yalidy Matos
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
School of Arts and Sciences
Yalidy Matos' research areas include American politics, race and ethnic politics, Latino politics, immigration politics and policy, and political psychology.
Hyacinth Miller
Lecturer, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Instructor, Rutgers–Newark Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Hyacinth Miller's research focuses on Caribbean immigrants in the Diaspora, immigrant women and women of color in elected leadership, immigrant political incorporation and comparative politics. She co-teaches a course, Introduction to Caribbean Studies, which covers the diverse histories, cultures, and forms of thinking of Caribbean societies.
Carrie Mott
Professor, Department of Geography
School of Arts and Sciences
Carrie Mott's research interests include political geography, feminist geography, social justice movements, grassroots politics, borders, difference, pedagogies, activism, race, whiteness, solidarity, and U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She teaches Human Geography: Space, Place, and Location, a course that covers a range of topics such as language, religion, development, migration, and the unequal distribution of power.
James Niessen
World History Librarian
Alexander Library
Between November 1956 and April 1957, 32,000 Hungarian refugees came through Camp Kilmer in Piscataway, New Jersey, and found new homes in the United States through a process coordinated by Rutgers graduate and trustee Tracy S. Voorhees that is documented at https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/portals/hungarian/. James Niessen's recent publications focus on the 1956–1957 Hungarian relief crisis in the United States and other countries, based on research in the archives of the United Nations; the Austrian, German, and U.S. National Archives; and Catholic Relief Services. Articles based on this research are available at https://soar.libraries.rutgers.edu/bib/James_P._Niessen.
Ariel Otruba
Instructor, Department of Geography
School of Arts and Sciences
Ariel Otruba's research interests include feminist critical geopolitics, critical border studies, postcolonial development, violent geographies and geographies of violence, and conflict resolution and peace studies. She teaches Eastern Europe and Eurasia, a course in the geography department.
Liesl A. Owens-Wiedemer
Lecturer, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Liesl Owens-Wiedemer co-teaches a course, Introduction to Caribbean Studies, which covers the diverse histories, cultures, and forms of thinking of Caribbean societies.
Judy Postmus
Professor
Director, Center on Violence Against Women
School of Social Work
Judy Postmus is the founder and director of the Center on Violence Against Women at the School of Social Work. Her research interests include violence against women and children, impact of policies and services on survivors, and interagency collaboration models. She serves as principal investigator on a Rutgers Global Grant project that examines gender-based violence among refugees and migrants through a two-part event series. The first event, held in November 2017, Displaced Lives: The Threat of Violence for Refugee, Displaced and Conflict Affected Women, examined gender based violence within refugee and displaced populations related to inequality, social welfare, health, well-being, justice, programmatic response, and institutions. A follow-up event focused on gender-based violence and resettlement is scheduled for April 2018.
Robert Ramos
Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts
Lecturer, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Robert Ramos is a musicologist from the Rutgers Graduate School and Mason Gross School of the Arts. He co-teaches a course, Introduction to Caribbean Studies, which covers the diverse histories, cultures, and forms of thinking of Caribbean societies.
Hugh Rockoff
Professor, Department of Economics
School of Arts and Sciences
Hugh Rockoff began teaching at Rutgers in 1971. His primary research interests include the history of price controls, the U.S. economy in World War II, and U.S. monetary history. He teaches American Economic History, a course on the long-term trends in economic growth and institutions that includes the effects of immigration and the economics of slavery.
Nancy Sinkoff
Associate Professor, Department of History
Associate Professor, Department of Jewish Studies
Director, Center for European Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Nancy Sinkoff is a cultural-intellectual historian of early modern and modern East European Jewry who is particularly fascinated with the question of how diasporic Jews understood politics. She teaches Exile under Nazism and Communism, a course that explores the experience of Poles and Polish Jews under Nazi and Communist rule in the 20th century.
Donald Stager
Lecturer
School of Social Work
Donald Stager was an authorized immigration counselor for over 15 years and is considered an expert in the field of immigration. He teaches Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees, a graduate courses that examines the phenomenon of global human migration and human vulnerability.
Julia Stephens
Assistant Professor, Department of History
School of Arts and Sciences
Julia Stephens' research focuses on how law has shaped religion, family, and economy in colonial and post-colonial South Asia and in the wider Indian diaspora. She teaches Asian Migrations, which explores Asian migration from 1850 to the present and how global historical trends have shaped its patterns.
Sarolta Takács
Professor, Department of History
Director, Modern Greek Studies Program
School of Arts and Sciences
Sarolta Takács' current research focuses on Roman perception of space as well as the integration of computer generated modeling in the humanities and social sciences. As director of the Modern Greek Studies Program, she has helped create courses—including the service-learning course to Leros, Migrants and Refugees in the Eastern Mediterranean—that focus on migrant and refugee issues.
Saunjuhi Verma
Assistant Professor, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations
School of Management and Labor Studies
A sociologist by training, Saunjuhi Verma's research is driven by questions about how socio-legal norms, such as immigration policies and labor law, inform the racialization of workers within global markets. She teaches Immigration, Public Policy, and Worker Rights, a graduate course which examines the role of immigrant labor in contemporary society and accompanying public policy debates.
Rafael Vizcaino
Teaching Assistant, Department of Comparative Literature
School of Arts and Sciences
Rafael Vizcaino teaches a course, Latino Literature and Culture, which surveys Latino/a literary voices drawn from the Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and other Latin American migrations to the United States.
RUTGERS BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES
Harsh Sule, MD, MPP
Associate Director, Office of Global Health
Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine
New Jersey Medical School
Harsh Sule has global health experience related to administrative and service activities, and his international work has spanned several countries including Azerbaijan, China, Japan, and Sierra Leone. He lived and worked in Azerbaijan where he worked with International Medical Corps on an emergency medicine development project and also served briefly as the organization’s Country Director. Prior to coming to Rutgers, he worked at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA, where he co-founded/directed a fellowship in Global Health for Emergency Physicians and served as a faculty mentor for Refugee Health Partners.