Charlotte O’Brien

Principal Investigator

Charlotte is a Professor in York Law School. She has degrees in Law and Social and Political Sciences, and many years of experience of working and volunteering in Citizens Advice offices. She specialises in EU social law and citizenship, and both UK and EU welfare law. Her work focuses on bringing together doctrinal and empirical study, in particular developing new socio-legal research methods to study EU law. She was PI on the ESRC-funded EU rights Project. Her work has been cited in the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the UK Supreme Court, and the Court of Justice of the European Union.  

Simon Parker

Co-Investigator

Simon is a Professor in the Politics department at the University of York.  His research interests combine the study of comparative urban politics and policy, comparative European politics and the politics of asylum and immigration.

Current projects include a historical investigation of migration policy and politics in London (1880-to present) on going ESRC funded research into the trans-Mediterranean European refugee ‘crisis’ (2015-to present). Simon is also co-investigator with Indrajit Roy and Nicole Lindstrom of the ESRC/GCRF Citizenship futures: ‘the politics of hope’ in India and Europe research programme. He co-chairs the University of York Migration Network (MigNet) with Sara de Jong and he is Co-Director with Daryl Martin of the Centre for Urban Research (CURB).

Madeleine Sumption

Co-Investigator

Madeleine Sumption is the Director of the Migration Observatory, which provides evidence-based analysis of migration in the UK. Madeleine is a policy specialist focusing on the impacts of migration policies and the role of migrants in the labour market.

Madeleine’s research interests include labour migration, the economic and social impacts of migration policies, and immigrant integration. She has also done comparative research on government policies towards immigrant investors, immigration in trade agreements, and the recognition of foreign qualifications. Before joining Oxford, Madeleine was Director of Research for the international program at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in Washington, DC. She remains a Non-resident Fellow with Migration Policy Institute Europe.

Madeleine is a member of the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent panel that advises the UK Government on migration issues. She is also Chair of Migration Statistics User Forum, which brings together producers and users of migration data. In 2017, she received the ESRC's prize for Outstanding Impact in Society and an MBE for services to social science.

Alice Welsh

Research Fellow

Alice is a Research Fellow at York Law School working on the EU Rights and Brexit Hub. She completed an ESRC funded PhD on EU atypical workers’ access to welfare rights in the UK in 2020, where she undertook placements at the AIRE Centre and Glendon College, York University in Toronto. Before this, she completed an LLB at York Law School and LLM at the Centre for Applied Human Rights.

Prior to this role, Alice has worked at the Public Law Project as a Research Fellow working on the EU Settlement Scheme and as a caseworker at the Refugee Council.

John Evemy

PDRA

John is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of York. His current research focuses on the development of government immigration policy since the Brexit referendum and the implications for EEA nationals in the UK and UK nationals in the EU. John has a broad research background and interest in British economic policy having previously worked on monetary policy, the productivity puzzle and UK labour market strategy.

John holds a PhD in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Birmingham and before this post worked as a Visiting Lecturer at Birmingham Business School and an Associate Lecturer in Politics at the University of York.

Mariña Fernández-Reino

PDRA

Mariña Fernández-Reino is a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory. Mariña completed her PhD in Sociology at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2013 with a dissertation on ethnic educational inequalities in the UK. Before joining the Migration Observatory, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Horizon 2020 project Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets, where she investigated the labour market discrimination of ethnic and migrant minorities in Spain.

Mariña is a quantitative sociologist and her research interests include ethnic educational inequalities, the socio-economic integration of migrants and their labour market discrimination.

Denis Kierans

PDRA

Denis Kierans is a Researcher at COMPAS, working with the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity and the Migration Observatory. His research interests include integration, the mainstreaming of migration into development plans, public attitudes towards migration and the use of data on migration in policy making.

From 2014 to 2019 he held various positions at the International Organization for Migration (IOM). As Data and Research Officer with IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, he wrote about international migration trends and designed and facilitated capacity building workshops for governments and other stakeholders.

He co-authored the Guidelines for the Harmonization of Migration Data Management in the ECOWAS Region, which was disseminated across West Africa and is helping to lay the groundwork for improved production and sharing of migration data in the region and beyond.

In his hometown of Halifax, Canada, he worked for a local NGO that sponsored the immigration of Russians and Israelis and supported their integration into the local community.

Denis holds a Masters degree from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he focused on the movements of vulnerable groups within and between the EU and Russia.

Sara Boulton

Clinic Solicitor

Sara is a Lecturer and Acting Director of The Baroness Hale Legal Clinic. Sara is the Module Leader for the Clinic which provides free legal advice to the public and enables students to work on real client cases, developing their skills as student legal advisors whilst closely supervised. Sara's research interests include the different models of clinical legal education on which she recently completed a Masters.

Sara joined York Law School in 2016 from Leeds Beckett University where she set up the Leeds Law School Clinic and worked with the Careers and Employability team. She previously spent 6 years with Addleshaw Goddard in Leeds as an Associate Solicitor specialising in Litigation.

As well as an LLB and an LLM, Sara has a BA Hons with Distinction in French, Portuguese and Hispanic Studies.

• Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol

• Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor of Social Policy, University of York

• Carla Clarke, Solicitor, Child Poverty Action Group

• Michael Dougan, Professor of Law, University of Liverpool

• Peter Dwyer, Professor of Social Policy, University of York

• Simon Halliday, Professor of Socio-legal Studies, University of York

• Bijan Hoshi, lead lawyer at the Public Law Project

• Lorna McGregor, Professor of Law at the University of Essex, and Commissioner of the British Equality and Human Rights Commission

• Grainne McKeever, Professor of Law and Social Justice Ulster University, and member of the Social Security Advisory Committee

• Gillian More, Legal Officer at  EU SOLVIT, and Affiliated Member of Leuven University.

• Sally Morshead, Managing Solicitor, Shelter

• Rupinder Parhar, GLA

• Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Kings College London

• Kate Smith, Senior Welfare Expert at Citizens Advice

• Professor Eleanor Spaventa, Università Bocconi

• Anthony Valcke, supervisor of the Belgian EU Rights Clinic