Haqqi Bahram

Haqqi Bahram is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) of Linköping University, Sweden. His research focuses on the legacy of statelessness and identity formation in post-statelessness and forced displacement contexts. His work engages experiences of stateless Syrian Kurds in Europe to study stateless standpoints and activism, social and political inclusion and transitional justice. Haqqi teaches on citizenship, exclusion and conflict and he has previously worked as a senior officer on humanitarian aid and development programmes implemented in Syria.

Jesus Tolmo

Jesus Tolmo practised as a lawyer for more than 25 years. Formerly, he worked as coordinator of the Legal, International and Advocacy department in Fundación Cepaim, and as a Consultant on statelessness for the UNHCR representation for the Nordic and Baltic countries. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Murcia, his research focuses on statelessness in the case of non-recognized states or with limited recognition. 

Judith Beyer

Prof. Dr. Judith Beyer is an anthropologist based at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She specializes in political and legal anthropology and conducts long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) and Southeast Asia (Myanmar) and increasingly in Europe. Her research focuses on the anthropology of law, the anthropology of the state, and theories of sociality and social order. Her current thematic interests are: the concept of community, practices of traditionalization, common sense, statelessness and ethnomethodology. Judith also produces country of origin expert reports for British asylum cases, in which she regularly encounters statelessness. Currently she is working on setting up an interdisciplinary research initiative provisionally entitled “Statelessness in Europe (SIE). Expert activists and the challenge of childhood statelessness in European nation states."

Judith Beyer website

Jyothi Kanics

Jyothi Kanics has a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and a Masters in International Relations from Yale University. She is currently working as an Associate Member of Child Circle and completing her PhD at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne. Since 1995 she has been active with NGOs and international organisations including UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children and OSCE ODIHR advocating for the rights of migrants in vulnerable situations such as separated children, trafficked persons, undocumented migrants and stateless persons. She continues to provide expert advice to the Council of Europe and OSCE as well as to various foundations and NGOs. She is an active individual member of the European Network on Statelessness in Switzerland and advised the ENS on its #StatelessKids campaign.

Katerina Komita

Katerina Komita is a lawyer before the Supreme Court of Greece specialized in human rights. From 2011 until 2021, she had been a member of the Legal Unit of the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) specialized in vulnerable cases. In this context, for seven years she had been the coordinator of the multidisciplinary project Prometheus (provision of holistic services for the recovery from the consequences of torture suffered by asylum seekers and refugees on a legal, social, psychological and medical level). She has contacted the ENS research Statelessness Index-Greece [years 2019, 2020 and 2021 (ongoing)]. Additionally, she has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist.

Katia Bianchini

Katia Bianchini is a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, where she is conducting research on refugee law and statelessness. She holds a law degree from the University of Pavia (Italy), an LL.M. in Comparative Laws from the University of San Diego (California, USA), and a Ph.D. in Law from the University of York (UK). Her doctoral thesis provided an empirical and legal analysis of how the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons is implemented in ten EU states. She has also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Göttingen). Before engaging in research, she practised immigration and refugee law for ten years in the UK and the USA for about 10 years.

Katia Bianchini website

Maeliss (Mae) Guillaud

I am a French and New York licensed attorney. I studied one year in South Korea, earned a JD from Sorbonne Law school and completed an LL.M from UCLA. I helped a charity foundation to promote children’s rights in Bangladesh. I lived in Boston for 2 years and assisted an association in the field of sexual violence in civil society and in the incarcerated population. As a probono attorney, I helped underrepresented residents with cognitive impairments to access US citizenship. Finally, I am an active legal fellow of UnitedStateless, an organization promoting human rights for stateless individuals in the US. I intend to join the immigration committee of Lille bar and help people by providing free legal advice but also by supporting them on their journey to access citizenship. I have a strong interest in ethics and justice and wishes to further structural changes to prevent civil rights violations.

Mahmut Sansarkan

Mahmut Sansarkan graduated from the Faculty of Political Science, in the field of Political Science from Istanbul Bilgi University. He has over eight years of national experience in working with disadvantaged groups such as minorities, children, refugees, LGBTQI+ and asylum seekers and leading project management, grant management system, resilience and emergency programs, income generating activities, technical vocational training, food security and economic recovery, entrepreneurship, refugee response, women economic empowerment, child labor, and protection. Mahmut has a special interest in minorities, humanitarian aid, conflict resolution, development, climate change, and gender studies.

Mheadeen Kadora

Hello, I am Mheadeen Kadora, Palestinian of origin, born in Syria, stateless, I grew up in Syria and received my education until I got a degree in information engineering, currently, I am in Germany to complete my education and obtain a master's degree. 

Nannie Sköld

Nannie Sköld works as Communications Associate at UNHCR’s Representation for the Nordic and Baltic Countries and conducts independent social science research on statelessness. Her research has focused on Kurds’ experiences of citizenship as well as statelessness and public health. She has an MSc in Sociology: Migration and Ethnic Studies from the University of Amsterdam and an MA in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh. Nannie has previously worked at the Scottish Refugee Council and been a board member of the Swedish Organization Against Statelessness (SOAS).Â