- Associate Professor Dr Olga OleinikovaFounder & Director"Our mission is to translate the silent movements of millions into a coherent global strategy. We are not just observing; we are architecting the response to a world in permanent flux."
One of Australia's leading migration scholars, Dr Oleinikova is Associate Professor in Migration at the University of Technology Sydney. A migration sociologist specialising in new forms of cross-border mobility, forced displacement, and climate migration across Asia-Pacific, she has held research fellowships at Oxford University, the Max Planck Institute, and WZB Berlin. Listed among Forbes Top 40 Global Ukrainians, her work is supported by grants from DFAT, NED, Oxford, and UTS. She has advises DFAT and the UN Migration Agency. Author of 3 monographs, she pioneered the systematic study of life strategies of migrants from crisis regimes, and founded GIEHM to build the global evidence base the field of emerging mobilities demands. - Dr Polina Smiragina-IngelströmCo-Founder & Deputy Director"The intersection of climate displacement and reproductive health is the most critical human rights challenge of the next century. GIEHM is where we build the evidence for that reality."
One of Europe's leading experts on migrant rights, biolegality, human trafficking, and gender, Dr. Smiragina-Ingelström is a lecturer and senior research manager at DIS Stockholm and Executive Secretary of the Victimology Working Group within the European Society of Criminology. She has advised the UN Migration Agency, UNODC, and the OSCE, where she served as chief investigator on trafficking and gender, and has worked directly with survivors across Europe and beyond. Sitting on the advisory board of the Journal of Modern Slavery, her expertise in structural inequality, child protection, and reproductive exploitation places her at the centre of GIEHM's policy and research agenda.
GEIHM's Advisory Board.
GIEHM's Advisory Board shapes the institute's intellectual direction and ensuring rigour across both research areas.
- Reproductive Health
Professor Angela Dawson
University of Technology Sydney (UTS) · Sydney, Australia
Nationally and internationally recognised expert in maternal and reproductive health and Associate Dean of Research at UTS. She leads the reproductive health theme at INSIGHT, the UTS Research Institute she established in 2023, focusing on under-served populations including refugees and women in humanitarian emergencies - Reproductive Technologies
Professor Marcia C.Inhorn
Yale University · Connecticut, United States
One of the world's foremost medical anthropologists, holding the William K. Lanman Jr. Chair at Yale University. Author of seven books and editor of thirteen, her decades of ethnographic research on IVF, surrogacy, and cross-border reproductive travel place her among the founding scholars of GIEHM's field. - Computational Demography
Professor Emilio Zagheni
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) · Rostock, GermanyDirector of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and global pioneer in computational demography. He leads the Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography and is best known for his foundational role in using web and social media data to study migration processes. - Climate Migration
Associate Professor Yvonne Su
York University · Toronto, Canada
Associate Professor at York University and Visiting Scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, specialising in forced migration, climate displacement, and queer migration. With over $12 million in secured research funding, her work has been cited in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. - Migration & Displacement
Professor AKM Ahsan Ullah
Universiti Brunei Darussalam · Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
One of Asia's foremost scholars of migration, displacement, and refugee studies, with positions at the American University in Cairo, the Asian Institute of Technology, and multiple Canadian universities. Author of over 20 books with Routledge and Palgrave, and consultant to the World Bank and UK International Development Department. - Migration & Law
Dr Natalia Ollus
European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI), UN affiliated · Helsinki, Finland
Director of HEUNI, the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control affiliated with the United Nations , and one of Europe's leading criminologists. Specialising in human trafficking, labour exploitation, and migrant worker rights, she has held positions at UNODC, the UN Permanent Mission of Finland, and the OSCE Vienna. - Reproductive Migration, BioLaw
Professor Sonja van Wichelen
University of Sydney · Sydney, Australia
One of Australia's leading scholars at the
intersection of law, life science, and globalisation. Selected from over 1,500 applicants for the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, her research spans legal anthropology, reproductive technologies, surrogacy, and global migration. She directs the Biopolitics of Science Research Network.
A worldwide network of expertise.
GIEHM Associates are leading researchers, legal scholars, demographers, and policy experts from across the world.
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Associate Professor Medea Badishvili
Ilia State University, Georgia
Displacement & Reproductive Migration
Caucasus / Georgia
Dr. Medea Badashvili is Associate Professor in Human Geography and Head of the Master Programme in Gender Studies at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia. Holding a PhD in Human Geography, her research spans labour migration, refugee flows, gender equality, domestic violence, and women's political and economic empowerment in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet contexts. Her current research, supported by a DAAD fellowship at the University of Göttingen, examines the lived experiences of Ukrainian refugee women in Germany and Georgia, exploring how displacement reshapes power dynamics, family decision-making, and cultural identity. Her comparative work across post-Soviet states and Georgia, combined with deep expertise in gender and migration, makes her a vital contributor to GIEHM's research on the reproductive dimensions of forced displacement.
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Post-Doctoral Researcher Polina Vlasenko
University of Oxford, UK
Reproductive migration
Europe / Ukraine
Dr. Polina Vlasenko is a postdoctoral researcher in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Oxford, with training spanning political philosophy, gender studies, science and technology studies, and medical anthropology. She holds a PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, where her dissertation examined the political economy of Ukraine's export-oriented egg donor and IVF industry, exploring donor eggs as racialised commodities and egg donors' experiences of reproductive labour under post-socialism. Her research centres on women's reproductive intimacies and labours, the political economy of assisted reproduction, biocapitalism, and post-socialist transformations of gender and biotechnology. Dr. Vlasenko brings to GIEHM rare and direct empirical expertise in reproductive migration and the global circuits of fertility, placing her at the very heart of the institute's founding research agenda.
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Professor
Linda Steele
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Law
Australia / Asia-Pacific
Professor of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, Dr Steele works at the intersection of disability, law, and social justice. Her research examines how law enables and redresses institutional violence against marginalised populations, with particular expertise in forced sterilisation, bodily autonomy, and the legal governance of reproduction. Her concept of "disability-specific lawful violence" offers a powerful framework for understanding the legal grey zones that drive reproductive migration across borders. Recipient of the Australian Legal Education Award for Excellence in Teaching, she brings to GIEHM critical legal expertise at the intersection of reproductive rights, human rights, and migration.
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Associate Professor
Hong Quan Nguyen
Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Climate Migration
Vietnam / Southeast Asia
Associate Professor Hong Quan Nguyen leads the Institute for Circular Economy Development and the Institute for Environment and Resources at Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. With over 15 years of research in environmental hydrology across Southern Vietnam, including saline intrusion, flood and drought dynamics, and water pollution, he has built one of the region's most comprehensive interdisciplinary portfolios in climate change adaptation and sustainability science. His work applies trans-disciplinary approaches bridging academia, industry, and government to address the environmental challenges reshaping human livelihoods across Southeast Asia. As co-researcher on GIEHM's DFAT-funded project on climate migration in Vietnam and Brunei, he brings indispensable regional expertise and deep knowledge of the socio-ecological systems driving displacement across the Indo-Pacific.
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Anne Brandt Christensen
Faculty of Law, DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia
Law
Denmark / Europe
A licensed Danish Advokat and member of the Danish Bar Association, Anne Brandt Christensen brings over two decades of frontline legal expertise in human trafficking and victim protection. Member of the Council of Europe Network of Specialised Lawyers & NGOs, she has been repeatedly nominated by the Danish Government as Expert for GRETA — the Council of Europe's expert group on action against trafficking. A recipient of the European Crime Prevention Award (EU) for anti-trafficking work in 2014, she has chaired NGO HopeNow and serves on the board of NGO AmiAmi. Her practical legal expertise at the intersection of trafficking, migration, and victim rights makes her an invaluable voice in GIEHM's policy and research network.
Associate.
