Els de Graauw / Conference Organizer / Moderator Els de Graauwis Assistant Professor at Baruch College, with an appointment in the Department of Political Science and teaching responsibilities also in the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. She specializes in American politics, immigration, civil society organizations, (sub)urban politics, and public policy, with a focus on building institutional capacity for immigrant integration and representation at the local and state levels. She is the author of Making Immigrant Rights Real: Nonprofits and the Politics of Integration in San Francisco (Cornell University Press, 2016). Her research also appears in Politics, Groups, and Identities, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, WorkingUSA, Politics & Society, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Political Science, Daedalus, and various edited volumes. Her research has been supported by, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Professional Staff Congress at CUNY, the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, the National Center for Border Security and Immigration (BORDERS), and the Netherland-America Foundation. Els earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and she also holds a M.A. degree in American Studies from Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Gabrielle Belli / Presenter Gabrielle Belli holds an M.A. in International Affairs from The New School. Her work focuses on reintegration of refugees and ex-combatants, as well as countering and preventing violent extremism. Gabrielle regularly consults for peacebuilders and a wide range of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as a researcher, analyst, and digital strategy developer. Her most recent work includes projects with the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security, the International Organization for Migration, and the International Rescue Committee.
Sayu Bhojwani / Keynote Speaker Sayu Bhojwaniserved as New York City’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs and is the founder of South Asian Youth Action, a community-based organization in Queens. Since 2010, she has served as Founder and President of The New American Leaders Project, which is based in New York City. Sayu’s work to build a more inclusive democracy has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and in the New York Times. She has shared her personal journey in The National and contributes frequently to the The Huffington Post and Medium. Her TED talkfocuses on the importance of immigrants to American democracy. Sayu earned a Ph.D. in Politics and Education from Columbia University, where her research focused on immigrant political participation. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. An immigrant of Indian descent, she grew up in Belize and now lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Sarah C. Bishop / Presenter Sarah C. Bishopis an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, and is the author of the book U.S. Media and Migration: Refugee Oral Histories (Routledge, 2016). Sarah specializes in research concerning the interactions of nationalism, citizenship, migration, and media, and is particularly concerned with the ways discourses of power and knowledge inform processes of short- and long-term human migration to the United States. Her current project, called “Undocumented Storytellers,” is being supported by the Diversity Projects Development Fund at CUNY, the James W. Carey Urban Communication Foundation, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation. Sarah’s recent work has been published in top-ranked academic journals including Communication, Culture, & Critique, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Space & Culture, Journal of Studies in International Education, and the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research. At Baruch, Sarah offers a range of undergraduate and graduate classes in Gender/Race/Ethnicity in Communication, Media and Migration, Privilege and Difference, and Digital Media Culture.
John Casey / Moderator John Casey is an Associate Professor in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, CUNY. From 1999 to 2007, he was a Senior Lecturer in management, leadership, and governance at the Australian Graduate School of Policing, Charles Sturt University. Previous to his academic career, he worked as a public and nonprofit sector executive in Australia, Spain, and the United States. He is the author of numerous articles and books on public policy about the nonprofit sector, immigration, and policing. His book, The Nonprofit World: Civil Society and the Rise of the Nonprofit Sector, was published by Lynne Rienner Press in 2016.
Ernesto Castañeda / Presenter Ernesto Castañedareceived his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Columbia University, Baruch College-CUNY, and the University of Texas at El Paso. He has been a visiting scholar at the Sorbonne, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School for Social Research, and the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. He is affiliated with the Center on Health, Risk, and Society and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University in Washington, DC, where he is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. He compares immigrant integration and ethnic political mobilization in the United States and Western Europe. He has conducted surveys and ethnographic fieldwork in the United States, France, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Algeria, and Morocco. Ernesto has published on remittances and development; integration and transnationalism; hometown associations and diaspora organizations; urban exclusion; the border fence; transnational families and the children of migrants left behind; health disparities within Hispanic, immigrant, public housing, and homeless populations.
Charles Dahan / Presenter Charles Dahan served as the first program manager for the Stanford University Immigration Policy Lab, serving as the program manager for NaturalizeNY, a multi-million dollar partnership between Stanford University, the State of New York, Robin Hood Foundation, and New York Community Trust. As the first point of contact for all stakeholders, including New York’s 27 Opportunity Centers, he worked on every aspect of the naturalization program, which successfully assisted over one thousand New Yorkers in the naturalization process. NaturalizeNY will hold its annual lottery again in 2017, nearly tripling in size. He now works as a researcher in the Stanford University Medical School to evaluate health policies and non-profit campaigns. Charles earned an M.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, and he will defend my dissertation in the University of Florida Department of Political Science in June 2017. His work uses survey and natural experiments to analyze the relationship between racial and ethnic bias and support for social welfare programs, and it attempts to identify strategies for decreasing out-group antipathy, particularly toward Black and Hispanic Americans.
Alexandra Délano Alonso / Presenter Alexandra Délano Alonsois Assistant Professor of Global Studies at The New School. She specializes in the study of Mexico-US migration, with a particular focus on migration policies from a transnational perspective. The question of state responsibility and how this is defined and practiced in different aspects related to the mobility of people is at the core of her work. She examines questions about how conceptions of migrants’ rights and responsibilities are changing in a context of increasing transnational connections. Her specific focus is on undocumented migration and the ways in which migrants with precarious legal status are rendered visible or invisible by the state in particular contexts, and the ways in which they and their allies challenge these structures. Her book Mexico and Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) was the co-winner of the William LeoGrande Prize for the best book on US-Latin America Relations and was published in Spanish by El Colegio de México in 2014. Alexandra is co-editor of Borders and the Politics of Mourning (Social Research, 2016) with Benjamin Nienass. Her forthcoming book, A Bridge to Membership: Diaspora Policies, Immigrant Integration, and Precarious Status, focuses on the role of Latin American consulates in promoting immigrant integration in the United States and Canada. She received her Ph.D. in International Relations at Oxford University.
Jessica Durovy / Presenter Jessica Durovy is currently working towards her Ph.D. in Sociology at The New School for Social Research. Her research centers on the resettlement experiences and monitoring and evaluation of LGBTQ+ and other high-risk refugee groups resettling in the United States. Jessica also holds an M.A. in International Affairs from The New School.
Justin Gest / Presenter Justin Gest is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He is the author of Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West (2010), The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (2016), and will soon publish Crossroads: Comparative Immigration Regimes in Times of Demographic Change (Cambridge University Press 2017). He has authored a dozen peer-reviewed articles, and provided analysis for BBC, CNN, The Guardian, NPR, Politico, Reuters, and Vox.
Robin A. Harper / Presenter Robin A. Harperis an Associate Professor of Political Science at York College, CUNY. Her research focuses on immigration, citizenship, borders, and civic engagement. Her current research examines how naturalization ceremonies embody and shape citizenship; how immigrants think about citizenship, how those understandings influence their civic engagement; and, questions about inclusion/exclusion, and permanence among temporary labor migrants. Before coming to York, Robin was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wellesley College and Queens College, CUNY. She is a former Deputy Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and Language Services and the Policy Supervisor for Social Services and Immigrant Affairs at NYC Office of Management & Budget. She served as a Policy Analyst as a Robert Bosch Fellow in the Berlin, Germany, Office of Integration Affairs and the Ministry of Labor in the Immigrant Integration Department. She was a Project Supervisor for a cross-border social service program, AVICEN, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center, a Masters of Public Policy & Administration (MPA) from Columbia University, a Masters of International Affairs (MIA) from George Washington University, and a B.A. in Modern European Studies and International Relations from Smith College.
Stacy Anne Harwood / Presenter Stacy Anne Harwoodis an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received a Ph.D. in Planning from University of Southern California in 2001. The heart of her research focuses on urban planning processes in diverse, multicultural communities with an emphasis on the ways in which the urban planning processes can marginalize or empower the voices of racial and ethnic minorities. Her recent published work examines anti-immigrant and immigrant-friendly local policy making in U.S. cities, as well as the spatial implications of racial micro-aggressions on college campuses.
Marina Kaneti / Presenter Marina Kaneti is a Ford Foundation Fellow researching migration dynamics along the New Chinese Silk Road. She received her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, New York in 2016; and was the recipient of The 2016 Hannah Arendt Dissertation Award. Marina’s most recent publications include “(Re)branding the State: Border Control and the Moral Imperative of State Sovereignty,” co-authored with Mariana Assis in Social Research (2016) and “Mêtis, Migrants, and the Autonomy of Migration” in Citizenship Studies (2015). She has also published essays and book reviews in The Public Seminar, Contemporary Political Theory, etc. In 2015-2016, Marina supervised graduate students’ research on refugee resettlement and integration in the United States. The students’ extensive field engagements and findings form the basis for the paper presented at this conference.
Neeraj Kaushal / Presenter Neeraj Kaushal is Professor of Social Policy and Chair of the Doctoral Program at the Columbia School of Social Work. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also a Research Fellow at IZA -the Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany. She is a labor and health economist, and her research focus is on how policies and events affect the well-being of low-income families with special emphasis on immigrants.
Fanny Lauby / Presenter Fanny Laubyis Assistant Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University. She has received her M.A. degree from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, a Ph.D. in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center as well as a Ph.D. in American Studies from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. Prior to joining the faculty at William Paterson, she has taught at Baruch College-CUNY and at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. Fanny’s research focuses on the experiences and the political mobilization of immigrant youths in the United States.
Shirley Leyro / Presenter Shirley Leyrois an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. She is a native New Yorker currently living in Harlem. A critical criminologist, Shirley’s research focuses on deportation effects – including the impact of the fear resulting from the vulnerability to deportation. Her research interests include immigration, social disorganization, and crimmigration. She is co-editor of Outside Justice: Immigration and the Criminalizing Impact of Changing Policy and Practice (Springer, 2013) as well as a contributor to the same volume. She is also a member of the Leadership Team for the Latina Researchers Network.
Bernadette Ludwig / Presenter Bernadette Ludwigis an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and the director of the Civic Engagement minor at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island. In her work, Bernadette analyzes the intersections of immigration, gender, and race; specifically how refugees and immigrants assert their agency to respond to imposed racial and gender hierarchies and refugee (resettlement) policies. She is the author of numerous book chapters and journal articles that have been published in International Migration, Forced Migration Review, Migration Letters, Migration Studies, and International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care. In addition, Bernadette is a board member of Napela, a nongovernmental organization that serves West African refugee and immigrant families in Staten Island. Prior to her academic career, Bernadette worked for six years with refugee and immigrant communities in Atlanta, most recently as the co-founder and executive director of Culture Connect, Inc.
Paul N. McDaniel / Presenter Paul N. McDanielis an Assistant Professor of Geography at Kennesaw State University in metro Atlanta, Georgia. His research explores the causes, processes, and implications of immigration to urban regions—specifically, processes of immigrant settlement, integration, and receptivity in cities and metropolitan areas, using mixed-methods, qualitative, and community-based participatory research methods. His teaching interests broadly include regional geography, urban geography and urban studies, human geography, population geography, and research methods. Previously, Paul was a research fellow with the American Immigration Council in Washington, DC and a project researcher with Catholic Legal Immigration Network, also in DC. Prior to his work in Washington, he was at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he worked on community-based participatory research projects in partnership with the Department of Family Medicine at Carolinas Medical Center and the Mecklenburg Area Partnership for Primary-care Research (MAPPR), the Levine Museum of the New South, and Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. Paul earned a Ph.D. in Geography and Urban Regional Analysis from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an M.A. in Higher Education Leadership from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, an M.S. in Geography from the University of Tennessee, and a B.S. in Geography from Samford University.
Anne McNevin / Moderator Anne McNevin is Associate Professor of Politics at The New School. Her research is located at the intersection of Migration Studies and International Relations. She has broad interests in the contemporary transformation of sovereignty, citizenship and political community with a particular focus on displacement, mobility, borders, and the global governance of migration. She is author of Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political (Columbia University Press, 2011) and associate editor of Citizenship Studies. Her recent work on the governmentality of migration management in the Indonesian context is published in International Political Sociology and Security Dialogue.
Caryn Medved / Presenter Caryn Medved received her doctoral degree in speech communication from the University of Kansas, a master’s degree in labor and industrial relations-human resource management from Michigan State University, and her B.A. in communication from Michigan State University. Her research agenda focuses on issues of work and life balance, including dual-career couple negotiations, identity struggles for stay-at-home mothers, single-employee backlash in the workplace, and work and family socialization. Her most recent work on stay-at-home fathers and breadwinning mothers’ task and identity negotiations was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Caryn’s current work explores power inequities in the implementation of workplace flexibility and low-income, hourly workers’ challenges in managing health-related work-life conflicts. Her work has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Family Communication, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Women & Language, Négotations, and Communication Studies.
John Mollenkopf / Presenter John Mollenkopfis Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has authored or edited eighteen books on the role of immigration, race, and ethnicity in urban America, including a co-edited volume with Manuel Pastor, Unsettled in America: Metropolitan Context, Local Leadership, and Immigrant Integration (Cornell University Press, 2016). Other works on immigrant integration include Bringing Outsiders In: Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation (co-edited with Jennifer Hochschild, Cornell University Press, 2009) and a prize-winning study of educational attainment, labor market outcomes, and political and civic involvement among second-generation immigrant and native minority young adults in metropolitan New York, Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (with Philip Kasinitz, Mary Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway, Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2008). He has been a visiting scholar at Sciences Po in Paris and the University of Amsterdam, a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and a Fellow the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Prior to joining The Graduate Center, he directed the Economic Development Division of the New York City Department of City Planning and taught public management and urban studies at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and B.A. from Carleton College.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. / Dean of the Weissman School Aldemaro Romero Jr. is a scholar and a higher education administrator. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Miami, Florida. He has published nearly 900 pieces including more than 20 books and monographs and hundreds of articles in both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications. His academic interests range from environmental and evolutionary biology to marine biology to history and philosophy of science and science communication. He has also been involved in mass communication and art productions and has been awarded numerous grants and prizes for his research, teaching, and science communication work. His experiences in academia includes, but is not limited to, Director and Associate Professor of the Environmental Studies Program at Macalester College, MN (1998-2003), Chair and Professor of the Department of Biological Sciences at Arkansas State University (2003-2009), Dean and Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (2009-2014), and Dean and Professor of the George and Mildred Weissman School of Arts & Sciences at Baruch College-CUNY (2016-present).
Michele Waslin / Moderator Michele Waslin is a Senior Research and Policy Analyst at the American Immigration Council and focuses on high-skilled immigration and enforcement. For nearly twenty years, she has conducted policy-relevant research, translated it into effective outreach messages and materials, and served as a leading voice advocating for effective immigration reform. She has written many reports on a wide variety of immigration-related policies, and has authored multiple book chapters. She previously worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts where she launched the Immigration and the States project focusing on the relationship between levels of government. She also worked at the National Council of La Raza and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Michele holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. from the University of Chicago.
Abigail Fisher Williamson / Presenter Abigail Fisher Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy & Law at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University, an M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School, and a B.A. from Williams College. Her overarching research agenda – at the intersection of urban politics, racial and ethnic politics, political behavior, and social policy – uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how and when communities engage to address critical societal problems. Her research has received funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ruth Landes Memorial Fund, and Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS). She is the author of articles, chapters, and reports, and the co-editor of the forthcoming volume, The Politics of New Immigrant Destinations: Transatlantic Perspectives (Temple University Press). Her current book project, Welcoming New Americans? Local Governments and Immigrant Incorporation, focuses on municipal responses to immigrants and how these responses shape social and political incorporation.