Research Consortium on Remittances in Conflict and Crises

Member Bios

Richard Black is Director of Research in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, and Director of the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty.  Richard Black's work focuses on the study of international migration, including forced migration and post-conflict return, and related social and economic transformations. As Director of the DFID-funded 'Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty', he works with research partners in Albania, Bangladesh, Egypt and Ghana on an integrated programme of research, training and capacity building. He acted as a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writing on the migration effects of climate change. Richard's research currently focuses on international migration and 'sustainable return'. Building on studies conducted for the UK Home Office, ESRC and the European Commission on return to the Balkans, and for DFID on return to West Africa, he is developing a framework to understand how return affects different stakeholders in 'sending' and 'receiving' countries, and to promote the sustainability of this return in terms of poverty reduction and post-conflict reconstruction. He has also worked on post-war return to Mozambique and its impact specifically on the natural resource sector, comparing present day policy with colonial forestry interventions, and edited a collection on the Millennium Development Goals which appeared in early 2004. 

Micah Bump is a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University where he works on immigrant integration, remittances, and human trafficking. He recently co-authored “Remittances from Neighbors: Trends in Intra-Regional Remittance Flows.” (with Patricia Weiss Fagen) in Beyond Small Change: Making Migrants’ Remittances Count.” Steven Wilson, editor. Inter-American Development Bank. 2005. He holds a M.A. in Latin American Studies with a certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Micah holds a B.S. in Spanish from the same institution.

Jørgen Carling is a human geographer and has primarily worked on various aspects of West African migration and transnationalism. He is Norway’s foremost expert on migrant remittances and has been engaged as an advisor on remittances and development issues to various international organizations and Norwegian government institutions. Carling has worked with combined qualitative and quantitative research designs. He is the only researcher at PRIO working full time on migration issues. He has recently held visitorships at COMPAS and at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI).

Patricia Weiss Fagen is Senior Associate at ISIM. Prior to coming to Georgetown University, she served with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington DC as External Relations officer and as the Chief of Mission in El Salvador. During 1995-96 she was on loan to the UN Research Institute for Social Development, as senior associate of the War Torn Societies Project, and from 1996-98 she worked in the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank. Throughout this period, she specialized in research and evaluations of operational projects related to post-conflict reintegration and reconstruction. While associated with ISIM, Dr. Fagen’s work has focused on post-conflict reconstruction, refugees, refugee/returnee integration and migrant remittances. Dr Fagen has a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her recent publications include “Remittances from Neighbors: Trends in Intra-Regional Remittance Flows.” (with Micah Bump) in Beyond Small Change: Making Migrants’ Remittances Count.” Steven Wilson, editor. Inter-American Development Bank. 2005, “El Salvador and Guatemala: Refugee Camp and Repatriation Experiences” (with Sally Yudelman) in Krishna Kumar, ed. Women and Civil War: Impact, Organizations and Action, and “Post Conflict Reintegration and Reconstruction: Doing it Right Takes a While,” in Steiner, Gibney and Loescher, eds. Problems of Protection.

Paul Harvey has worked for ODI for the last 2 years. He has worked as a programme manager, emergency coordinator and country director for Concern, Children's Aid Direct and IRC in many different crises including Sierra Leone, Somalia and Kosovo.

Nicholas Van Hear is a Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford. He heads the research programme ‘The Migration-Asylum Nexus’ at COMPAS. His background is in the sociology and political economy of development, with a doctorate in West African Studies (University of Birmingham 1982). Van Hear is the author of New Diasporas (London: Routledge, 1998) and co-editor of The Migration-Development Nexus (Geneva: International Organisation for Migration, 2003), as well as writing numerous articles in journals, edited volumes and practitioner publications. Van Hear has worked on forced migration, conflict, development, reconstruction and related issues for more than 20 years, with field research in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. Before joining COMPAS, he was a Senior Researcher at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford (1990-2000) and a Senior Researcher at the Danish Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen (2000-2003). In the last ten years, Van Hear’s main focus has been on ‘refugee diasporas’ -- that is migrant communities formed largely as a result of conflict. His particular interest is the ways such diasporas influence the homeland and interact with those left at home and located elsewhere in the diaspora. Sri Lankan Tamils and Somalis have been the main cases investigated. For further details, see: www.compas.ox.ac.uk/research/migration_asylum_nexus.shtml

Dr. Karin von Hippel is the Co-Director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project. Previously she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London, and spent several years working for the United Nations and the European Union in Somalia and Kosovo. In 2004 and 2005, she participated in two major studies for the UN – one on the UN Integrated Missions and the second on the UN humanitarian system. Also in 2004, she was part of a small team investigating the development potential of Somali remittances, funded by USAID. In 2002, she advised the OECD on what development co-operation can do to get at the root causes of terrorism. Since then, she has participated in numerous conferences and working groups on the subject in Africa, Europe, and North America. She also directed a project on European counter-terrorist reforms, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, edited the volume, Europe Confronts Terrorism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), and was a member of Project Unicorn, a counter-terrorism police advisory panel in London. Additional publications include Democracy by Force (Cambridge, 2000), which was short-listed for the Westminster Medal in Military History. She received her Ph.D. in International Relations from the LSE, her M.St. from Oxford, and her B.A. from Yale University.

Dr. Randolph Kent directs the Humanitarian Futures programme at Kings College, London. He accepted his present post after completing his assignment as UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia in April 2002. Prior to his assignment in Somalia, he served as UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Kosovo [1999], UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Rwanda [1994-1995], Chief of the UN Emergency Unit in Sudan [1989-1991] and Chief of Emergency Prevention and Preparedness in Ethiopia [1987-1989]. Amongst his various publications is Anatomy of Disaster Relief: The International Network in Action. In October 2003 he co-authored a study for the United Nations on humanitarian reform, The Future of Humanitarian Assistance and the Role of the United Nations. The following year he authored an ODI publication entitled, Humanitarian Futures: Practical Policy Perspectives, and led a USAID-funded project, Social Facilitation, development and the Diaspora: Support for Sustainable Health Services in Somalia. In November 2004, Dr. Kent completed a UN-funded project dealing with the UN system’s disaster risk reduction capacity, Looking to the future: Practical steps to strengthen the United Nations relevance and value-added in disaster risk management. He, along with a team of three, has just completed a report for the United Nations on ways to deal with UN integrated missions in peace-building settings.

Anna Lindley is a Research Officer at Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University. She is interested in the links between migration, conflict and development, and her doctoral research focused on the dynamics and effects of migrants' remittances in insecure settings, particularly the Somali case.
She is currently working on EC-funded research on the micro-level analysis of violent conflict (www.microconflict.eu), exploring the causes, processes and consequences of forced migration within the Horn of Africa and to the EU.

Susan Martin serves as Visiting Professor and the Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr. Martin is also Director of the Certificate Program on Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies. Previously Dr. Martin served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, established by legislation to advise Congress and the President on U.S. immigration and refugee policy, and Director of Research and Programs at the Refugee Policy Group. Her publications include the World Migration Report: 2000 (ed.), Refugee Women, The Uprooted: Improving Humanitarian Responses to Forced Migration, Beyond the Gateway: Immigrants in a Changing America (ed.), Managing Migration: The Promise of Cooperation (forthcoming) and numerous monographs and articles on immigration and refugee policy. She is also the principal author of the 2004 World Survey on Women and Development: Women and Migration, produced for the United Nations. Dr. Martin served as a senior advisor to the Global Commission on International Migration and is on the advisory boards of the International Organization for Migration and the Comptroller General of the United States. She is a founder of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and serves on the Board of the Advocacy Project. She earned her MA and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA in History from Douglass College, Rutgers University.

Christopher McDowell is the Director of the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR) at City University in London and an independent consultant on involuntary displacement and resettlement. Dr McDowell has been researching forced migration and internal displacement in crisis and conflict countries since 1990. He has conducted extended research in East and Southern Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Europe with a particular focus on Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. Research has focused on the causes, consequences and patterns of transnational asylum migration, the impact of displacement on livelihoods and poverty, and on international humanitarian responses to complex emergencies. Christopher’s publications cover these themes. He is currently engaged in research that examines the linkages between UK asylum and refugee populations and their countries of origin. This includes remittances and other transfers, the establishment of transnational networks, and an understanding of the responsibilities of refugees towards home and the diaspora. A particular interest is to understand how the transnational dimensions of refugees’ lives shapes their settlement in the UK.

Kathleen Newland is Director and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute, an independent think-tank dedicated to international migration and refugee issues. Prior to founding MPI in July 2001, she co-directed the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Her work focuses on migration and development, refugee policy and international migration management. She also sits on the Board of the International Rescue Committee. From 1988-92, Ms. Newland was a member of the International Relations faculty of the London School of Economics. She is the author or editor of six books and 11 shorter monographs as well as numerous chapters and articles.

Ceri Oeppen is a doctoral research student at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex, UK.  Her current research is about the transnational activities, including remittance sending, of Afghan professionals living in California and London, and the interaction between transnationalism, return and integration.  She has also done research with Afghans in India.  She has worked with the UK Advisory Panel on Country Information, evaluating information on Afghanistan, she is also a founding member of the newly-formed European Centre for Afghan Studies (ECAS).  Ceri has a BSc (1st class) in Geography from University College London and an MSc (distinction) in Social Research Methods.

Manuel Orozco is director of remittances and development at the Inter-American Dialogue conducting policy analysis and advocacy on issues relating to global flows of remittances. He also heads the Central America program. In 2004 he coordinated a grant project funded by the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank and International Fund for Agricultural Development of the United Nations to leverage remittance transfers. In addition to his work at the Dialogue, he was chair of Central America and the Caribbean at the United States Foreign Service Institute and is senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. Dr. Orozco holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin, Masters in Public Administration and Latin American Studies, and a BA in International Relations from the National University of Costa Rica. His most recent publications include the books Remittances: Global oppportunities for international person-to-person money transfers. London, VRL Publishing Ltd 2005, International Norms and Mobilization for Democracy London: Ashgate Publishers, 2002, The Remittance Marketplace: Prices, Policy and Financial Institutions Washington, Pew Hispanic Center, June 2004, “Mexican hometown associations and development opportunities”, in Journal of International Affairs, Spring 2004, vol. 57, no. 2.

Kevin Savage has recently joined the Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI and is presently working humanitarian policy issues including cash based relief responses, the role of remittances in crises. Before joining the Group, Kevin worked as a programme manager, and desk officer, for IRC, World Vision, PWS&D, in several crises, including DR Congo, Burundi, and Afghanistan.