Team
 

Meet our core team

Prof. dr. Maarten P. Vink
Principal investigator

Maarten Vink is Professor of Citizenship Studies and Director of the Global Citizenship research area within the Global Governance Programme at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. He is also Co-Director of the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT). He co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (OUP, 2017) and has published on immigrant naturalisation, comparative citizenship regimes, dual citizenship, and Europeanization, among others. Maarten Vink is on leave from Maastricht University where he is Professor of Political Sociology and was one of the founders of the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE). He holds a PhD in Political Science from Leiden University (2003).

View Maarten’s profile page on European University Institute’s website

Prof. dr. Hans Schmeets
PhD co-supervisor

Hans Schmeets is professor in social statistics at Maastricht University and senior researcher at Statistics Netherlands. He is in charge of various statistical research projects including social capital, social cohesion, wellbeing, public opinions, religion, political participation, and organ donation. He also works for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the capacity of statistical analyst to assess the quality of elections in Election Observation Missions.

View Hans’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Dr. Mark Levels
PhD co-supervisor

Mark Levels is senior researcher at the Research Centre for Education and the Labor Market (ROA) of Maastricht University, fellow of the Maastricht Graduate School of Business and Economics and associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is affiliated with the NWO to help coordinate a national data operation on Dutch education, and held visiting research positions at the EUI, Oxford and Harvard, and was a fellow at CIDER.

View Mark’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Dr. Anna Tegunimataka
Post-doctoral researcher

Anna Tegunimataka is a post-doctoral researcher in Demography and Economic History at the school of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden, where she also obtained her PhD in June 2017.  Her research interests include immigrant integration, citizenship, education and family dynamics. Results from her previous studies have been presented to both Swedish and Danish policymakers.

View Anna’s profile page on Lund University’s website

 

Floris Peters
Post-doctoral researcher

Floris Peters is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at Maastricht University. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University (cum laude) on the relevance of citizenship for the socio-economic integration of immigrants. Furthermore, during 2018-2019, Floris is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM). His research interests include citizenship acquisition and socio-economic integration of first-generation immigrants, as well as donor registration in the Netherlands.

View Floris’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Marie Labussière
PhD candidate

Marie Labussière is a PhD candidate at the department of Political Science at Maastricht University since August 2017. She holds an engineering degree from the French National School of Statistics and Economic Analysis (ENSAE), and has obtained a Master’s degree in Social Sciences specialized in interdisciplinarity in Paris (École Normale Supérieure / École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales). Her research interests include: citizenship acquisition, education outcomes, intergenerational effects, and gender issues.​

View Marie's profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Christophe Leclerc
PhD candidate

Christophe Leclerc is a PhD candidate at the department of Political Science at Maastricht University since August 2017. He holds a bachelor degree in European Studies as well as a research master in European Studies from Maastricht University. His master thesis focused on the link between social capital and voter turnout at general elections in EU countries. His research interests include: citizenship acquisition, health outcomes, and housing conditions.​

View Christophe's profile page on Maastricht University’s website

 

Mira Seyfettinoglu
Research assistant

Mira Seyfettinoglu is a student in the MSc European Studies (research master), specializing in European Foreign Relations and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. She completed her BA in European Studies with Cum Laude with her quantitative thesis on why states adopt “Citizenship-by-Investment” programs. Mira supports the MiLifeStatus team conducting comparative legal analysis and coding cross-national differences in citizenship legislation in various global datasets. Mira holds a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and is the Student Ambassador of her MSc cohort in European Studies.

 

Mathias Thorkildsen
Research assistant

Mathias Thorkildsen is a bachelor student at the European Law School at Maastricht University. He holds a diploma in hispanic studies from the University of Salamanca.

Yleen Goffin - Simonis
Project officer

In September 2017, Yleen started working as project officer at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) at Maastricht University. She provides support for the ERC-funded research projects MiLifeStatus (led by prof. Maarten Vink) and MO-TRAYL (led by prof. Valentina Mazzucato). Furthermore, she supports the research and training programme New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA) (led by prof. Renée van de Vall), funded by the European Union H2020 Programme, and the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH) (led by dr. Vivian van Saaze).

View Yleen's profile page on Maastricht University’s website

 

Meet our research associates

Pieter Bevelander
Professor


Pieter Bevelander is professor of International Migration and Ethnic Relations at the Department of Global political studies and Director of MIM, Malmö Institute of Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, Malmö University, Sweden. His main research field is international migration and different aspects of immigrant integration as well the reactions of natives towards immigrants and minorities.

View Pieter's profile page on Malmö University's website 
 

Prof. Dr. Gerard-René de Groot
PhD co-supervisor

Gerard-René de Groot is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Law and Private International Law at Maastricht University. He is a leading international expert in the field of nationality law. He has published books and reports on nationality law. He was also invited by the Council of Europe and the UNHCR to work on several international instruments.

View Gerard-Rene’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Marloes de Hoon
PhD candidate

Marloes de Hoon joined the Maastricht Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in January 2016 as a PhD candidate. Her research project is part of the recently founded Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross Border Cooperation and Mobility (ITEM) and focuses on residential trajectories of asylum migrants in the Netherlands, including both internal and international (onward) moves. Her broader research interests include (cross-border) human mobility, immigrant integration and social cohesion.

View Marloes’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Bilisuma B. Dito 
Assistant Professor


Bilisuma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Society Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Maastricht. She is a Development Economist with research expertise on gender and intra-household resource allocation behavior in developing countries, and African transnational families in Europe and well-being outcomes. Bilisuma has a particular interest in understanding how transnational households behave and operate and in developing indicators to measure power relations in transnational and migrant households in the context of international migration. 
 
View Bilisuma’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

Eva Ersbøll
Senior Researcher

Eva Ersbøll is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Her research focuses on nationality law, acquisition and loss of nationality, statelessness, reduction of statelessness and rights of stateless persons, EU citizenship and free movement rights, migration including undocumented migrants, integration and integration tests, access to information, force used against children and mentally ill adults who are placed in institutions etc. Eva Ersbøll has a particular interest in the relationship between national and  international law.

View Eva's profile page on the Danish Institute for Human Rights' website 

Thomas Huddleston
Research Director, Migration Policy Group

Thomas Huddleston is Research Director on Migration and Integration at the Migration Policy Group (MPG). He coordinates MPG’s research and communication. His specific thematic areas of expertise include family reunification, naturalisation, immigrant political participation and the education of migrant and refugee children. Thomas obtained his PhD degree at Maastricht University in 2019 as affiliated member of the MiLifeStatus team.

View Thomas’s profile page on MPG’s website

Luana Russo
Assistant Professor in Quantitative Methods

Luana Russo is an  Assistant Professor in Quantitative Methods. She is a quantitative political science scholar with a large experience in working with ecological and geographical data. Her substantive research interests are in comparative politics, electoral and political behavior, political participation, electoral geography and quantitative methods. She holds a PhD from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (2011). She has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University and she has worked at Science-Po Paris and Université Lille 2. Her articles have been published in Quality & Quantity, Geojournal, Italian Political Science Review, French Politics and other journals.

View Luana’s profile page on Maastricht University’s website

 

MiLifeStatus has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 682626)

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