The team

Having moved to Norway in 2018, Annam Azeem is currently taking courses at Stavanger University while also attending Norwegian language classes at Bryne Kompetasesenter. She has a background in International Relations from Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad-Pakistan and has more than six years of teaching, administrative and research experience.  

Annam has experience in identity politics, especially in the context of religious identity and ethnic identity politics and their relationship with conflict and now wants to extend her research in the area of diasporic identity. She is interested in pursuing a doctoral degree on issues related to migration, nostalgia and diasporic identity. She is really excited to be able to contribute to the project and work alongside the team.

Isabella Corieri joined the team as a research assistant during a semester spent at the University of Stavanger with her current masters program. She is a graduate student in the European Masters of Migration and Intercultural Relations Program, an interdisciplinary Afro-European program funded by the Erasmus Mundus Association.

Prior to her master’s studies, she was the Assistant Director of Family Initiatives for a nonprofit organization known as Hopeprint working with refugee families in Syracuse, New York. With undergraduate degrees in both Anthropology and International Relations, Ms.Corieri’s research interests include urbanism and spatial justice, climate migration theory, intercultural education and integration in the context of forced migration. She is currently working with the team from Upstate New York, USA as she continues her own migration story and writes her master’s thesis about homeownership for families from a refugee background. 

Ali Dorani, an Iranian cartoonist and political activist that goes by pseudonym Eaten Fish, gained global recognition for the cartoons he created while being detained in an Australian-run immigration center on Manus Island for four years.

Dorani adopted the pen-name ‘Eaten Fish’ after his boat sank in the Indian Ocean during an attempt to seek asylum in Australia. In 2017, Ali became the ICORN resident in Stavanger, Norway, an organization that  helps persecuted artists (ICORN). He has since become involved in a University of Stavanger research project entitled “Our migration history” – where he encourages other immigrant communities to document their own lived experiences of immigration. He has also been working on other artistic/documentary projects in order to share his own story (#eatenfish). For more see https://artistsatriskconnection.org/story/ali-dorani

Jenny Mathilde Dyrkorn was involved as a research assistant on the team in the spring of 2020, as she spent one semester at Stavanger University through her current masters program. She is a graduate student in the European Masters of Migration and Intercultural Relations Program (EMMIR), an interdisciplinary Afro-European program funded by the Erasmus Mundus Association.

In the spring of 2021, she will write her Master’s Thesis on the topic of multiculturality and racism at Bon Appétit using Critical Discourse Analysis; she is set to submit in June 2021 and will graduate in September. Prior to her master’s studies, she took a Bachelor in European Studies with Spanish at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has previously lived in Italy and Germany, and is currently fulfilling her internship at the Nordic House in Reykjavik. Her research interests include critical discourse analysis; intersectionality; feminism; postcolonialism; and integration in the Nordics.

Nikola Lero is a student assistant at the University of Oldenburg and a research intern at the Slovenian Migration Institute in Ljubljana. He is completing the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters in Migration and Intercultural Relations at the University of Nova Gorica focusing on topics of art-based participatory methods, theories of multiculturalism and digital communities.

At the moment, Mr. Lero is conducting independent research as a University of Oldenburg grant recipient on the topic of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on academic mobility programmes in the EU.  He also holds an Erasmus+ Young Journalist Award for Bosnia and Herzegovina for writing on topics of migration and youth. In 2020, he co-founded the Blank Pages, a cosmopolitan art community which works on issues of migration, creativity and identity, and co-edited a multilingual art collection “Fragments of Freedom”.

Kristian Mora became a part of the research project during his last year at the University of Stavanger while completing his bachelors degree in Teaching at secondary school. He has a background in Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and has experience in multiculturalism stemming from his days dancing and owning a dance studio in Sandnes.

This allowed him to travel abroad and be introduced to different cultures and cultural exchanges between different minority groups that inspired him to write his BA with a focus on ICC. He recently presented parts of our project to the Immigration research network in Stavanger. Kristian currently works as a full-time teacher in Bryne ungdomsskule in Jæren. 

Linn Normand is a research affiliate in History at the Department of Culture and Languages at the University of Stavanger Norway and is lead-PI for this research project. She has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford with an interdisciplinary research background in international relations, history, education, and migration studies.

Her research interests include immigrant narratives, attitudes towards and representations of immigrants, and inclusive participatory research. She has extensive experience working with immigrant communities both in her capacity as a research scholar and as an educator who has taught university students (>11 years) in Norway, the UK and the US. Recent successful grant applications and awards include the UC Davis Diversity and Inclusion Grant and the UC Berkeley Peder Sather Grant. She is also Program Director of the UC Davis Global Migration Center. Her most recent publication (2020) “From blind spot to hotspot: representations of the ‘immigrant others’ in Norwegian curriculum/schoolbooks (1905-2013)” in the Journal of Curriculum Studies highlights the overlooked immigrant narratives in Norwegian educational textbooks over time. 

Silje Normand is Associate Professor of English at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has an interdisciplinary background within cultural history, literature and language from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.

Her doctoral research centred on languages of exclusion in early modern France and her current research interests include critical literacy and critical pedagogy, intercultural pragmatics, language and identity, inclusive participatory research, and performative practices within teacher education. She heads the research group Democracy and Citizenship (DEMCI) focused on inclusive citizenship practices and pedagogies, and the collaborative teacher education project UiS Dembra LU aimed at the prevention of racism, group-based hostility and antidemocratic attitudes in schools and teacher education. Her current research collaborations include the Erasmus+ project Critical Literacy and Awareness in Education (CLAE), the Horizon 2020 project EnviroCitizen: Citizen Science for Environmental Citizenship, and the research project Our Migration History.

Ellen Opsal has a background in sociocultural anthropology, comparative politics, and French. She is currently completing the European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations, a jointly run African-European Erasmus Mundus program. 

Her research focus is on the intersection of gender, race, and environmental justice. For her MA dissertation, Ellen is writing about the development of critical race theories in the Nordic countries. Other topics of interest include visual storytelling in transnational spaces and community organizing through public art. Ellen is participating in the UC Davis “Migration and Aesthetics” project documenting the artistic representation of migration around the world. Ellen completed an internship position with the project “Documenting the Undocumented: Documenting Immigrant Narratives in Norway and the USA through testimonials and digital storytelling” and is happy to be able to continue working closely with the team.

Rafael Rosales is a PhD Fellow at the University of Bergen and has been involved in the earlier stages of this project. He has a background in International Relations from the University of Edinburgh and in the fields of sustainability and energy transitions from the University of Stavanger.

Rafael has broad research interests ranging from international cooperation to human rights and is personally interested in the links between energy and migration. For now, his research focuses on how Norwegian cities can contribute to global climate goals.

Julia Sokolovska is currently involved in the project “Our migration history” while at the same time working on her M.A. degree in Literacy Studies at The University of Stavanger, focusing on adult literacy and academic reading and writing.

In addition, she is taking a degree in HR and Organizational Psychology at the Norwegian Business School, directing herself towards educational management. Julia has 4-year experience in EFL teaching at a Callan Method School and is a certified Callan Method teacher. She also took part in several projects within museum work, course development, teacher training and translation of teaching and learning materials in socio-financial education for “Aflatoun International” 

Ivana Spirovska has been involved as research assistant in this project. With a background in education and legal studies, Ms. Spirovska is currently completing European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

There she is particularly focusing on topics related to human rights, multiculturalism and international migration law, and pursuing research internship at the Slovenian Migration Institute (SMI) at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU). 

Kimble Walsh-Knarvik moved to Norway 20 years ago from Australia. In addition to learning Norwegian and starting a family, she has completed her teaching qualification at the University of Stavanger (UIS) and worked in Norwegian Middle and High schools teaching English and French.

Recently she completed her Masters in Literacy Studies at UIS. Her thesis  focused on Indigenous Australian literature exploring the notions of sovereignty, madness and anxiety.  Since then Kimble has participated in the ENRICH Erasmus+ course “English as a Lingua Franca in Inclusive Multilingual classrooms” and is participating in the project ” “Our Migration History” – a community-based participatory project  developed in collaboration with a team of researchers at the University of Stavanger, school teachers and students at two local high-schools, and the local cultural history museum of Stavanger. (MUST). Currently Kimble is working on developing lesson plans for DEMBRA based on this project’s in-school workshops.

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