- Kristjan Kaldur works at the Baltic Research Institute, where his main area of work and interest is migration and integration. Since 2007 he has conducted and contributed to a number of studies and projects focussing on these issues, including assisting with the preparation of and consulting on national development plans and strategies related to these areas. Hailing from Jõhvi, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Comparative Politics from the University of Tartu, at which he is currently working towards a doctorate on the adaptation of immigrants at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies.
Kristjan Kaldur
The Institute of Baltic Studies, Estonia
- Eva-Maria Asari is a lecturer in national security at the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences and for the European Joint Master’s in Strategic Border Management for Frontex. She teaches subjects related to migration and security. She has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has served as an expert with the European Migration Network and been involved in bringing people from different national backgrounds into decision-making (as part of the Round Table of Nationalities and the Guidelines on the Running of Platforms for Dialogue on Integration). Previously she was an advisor on integration and ethnic relations to the Minister for Population and Ethnic Affairs and contributed to the drafting of the ‘Estonian Integration Plan 2008-2013’.
Eva-Maria Asari
Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, Estonia
- Aet Kiisla is a lecturer at the Narva College of the University of Tartu. In her research, she focuses on ways of supporting unity and integration in society through organisational culture, curriculum development and sport. Her experience of working in the border town has enriched her understanding of the multifaceted nature of these issues and the practicalities they involve.
Aet Kiisla
Narva College of the University of Tartu, Estonia
- Kats Kivistik has been working as an analyst at the Baltic Research Institute since 2012, focussing on studies in the fields of education, adaptation and integration, youth issues and social cohesion. She has a doctorate in political science from the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu, at which she lectured from 2008-2018. She was involved in the Estonian Integration monitoring study in 2015, 2017 and 2020, writing chapters on political participation, Estonian language skills and contact between groups from different national backgrounds. She has also looked into the adaptation and equal treatment of new immigrants, including children, and is currently involved in a study designed to provide a wide-ranging overview of Estonian communities abroad.
Kats Kivistik
The Institute of Baltic Studies, Estonia
- Ave Lauren is a specialist in human geography, an expert with the European Migration Network (EMN) and a senior researcher at the Estonian Business School whose main areas of study are migration policy, labour migration and international mobility, talent clusters, integration and identity construction. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Cambridge, at which she studied the migration of leading specialists to Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area and its impact on the region and the development of its communities. As part of this study she was also admitted as a guest researcher to the US Congress and Library of Congress. She regularly contributes to Estonian media and to applied studies of migration and adaptation and serves as a consultant to cities and countries on shaping talent policy, both in Estonia and abroad.
Ave Lauren
European Migration Network, Estonia
- Raivo Vetik is Professor of Comparative Politics at Tallinn University. His research on integration of society has been focusing on issues related to the Russian-language minorities in Estonia and other countries neighbouring Russia. He has edited volumes on these issues with Amsterdam University Press (2011) and Peter Lang Press (2012) and has been head of the research team behind the integration monitoring of Estonian society, commissioned by the Estonian government, since the first monitoring survey in 2000. Currently, he coordinates an EU grant (mirnet.ee) aiming to establish a migration and integration research center at Tallinn University.
Raivo Vetik
Tallinn University, Estonia
- Svetlana Ridala (PhD) defended her doctoral dissertation entitled ‘Essays on Language Skills and Labour Market Outcomes’ at Tallinn University of Technology. She is engaged in the expansion of the Net Promoter Score platform at recommy.com beyond Estonia. Furthermore, she has embraced a new personal challenge of integrating Russian-speaking children into Estonian society by teaching mathematics in Estonian to 12th form students at the 21st Century School (Kool 21. Sajandil), where she is also the deputy head teacher. Among her scientific interests are aspects of economic success related to foreign language knowledge, wage gap as well as the significance of contextual factors in the usefulness of linguistic skills based on socioeconomic, institutional and ethnolinguistic elements.
Svetlana Ridala
Recommender OÜ and Kool 21. Sajandil, Estonia
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Triin Vihalemm born in 1968) is professor of communication research in University of Tartu. Having studied journalism (BA), sociology (MA) and mass communication (PhD) she identifies herself as communication sociologist with a focus on the role of communication in social change processes. After working in the private enterprise (Emor Ltd) in 1990ies she moved to the academia in 1999 and since then has been researcher and university teacher. Triin has been programme director for the MA curricula Communication management and currently acts as director of the MA curriculum Change management in society.
A significant part of over 90 scientific articles and book chapters published by Triin Vihalemm deal with acculturation of Russian-speaking population in Estonia after the collapse of SU: the change of their language and media practices and identity and Post-Soviet transition culture in general. She holds currently a research grant for studying Civic identity and transnational media practices of the Baltic Russian-speaking populations in the context of political crisis. She has been visiting research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She is member of council of European transformation sociologists network, Estonian Sociologists’ Association and several academic councils, member of public service ethics committee and invited expert in several decision making bodies dealing with the interrelationship between media and society.
Vihalemm has also good experience with applied research projects devoted to the social innovation and communication and change of everyday practices. 
Triin Vihalemm
University of Tartu, Estonia
- Justyna Segeš Frelak – Senior Policy Advisor on legal migration and integration at ICMPD focusing on labour migration, intra-EU mobility and migration governance. She graduated from the International Relations at the Warsaw School of Economics and Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw. From 2004 to 2017 she was working at the Institute of Public Affairs (Poland) as the Head of the Migration Program and senior analyst. She is the author of numerous publications and reports published in Poland and abroad. She has been a visiting researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), Oxford University, Policy Fellow at Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative (OSF).
Justyna Segeš Frelak
International Centre for Migration Policy Development, Austria
- Siiri Silm (PhD), is an associate professor of human geography and acting head of the Mobility Lab at the University of Tartu. She has developed mobile phone based methodology and conducted related research since 2004. Her main fields of research are related to human mobility, including ethnic segregation and inequality, transnationalism, tourism, urban studies and spatial planning. She has published a number of scientific articles about ethnic differences in people’s use of space, focusing on the whole activity space of people and different activity sites (homes, workplaces, leisure time activity sites, trips abroad, etc.), time dimension and social networks. She is the main person responsible for the research and development project ‘Understanding the Vicious Circles of Segregation: A Geographic Perspective’ (2019-2023).
Siiri Silm
University of Tartu, Estonia
- Aija Lulle is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough University and docent, Adjunct Professor of migration and mobility studies at the University of Eastern Finland. Aija Lulle is internationally known for her pioneering work on migration and has published in a wide range of leading journals and edited special issues for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Nordic Journal of Migration Research, Sexualities and Journal of Rural Studies. She is an associate editor of Emotion, Space and Society and European Societies.
Aija Lulle
Loughborough University, Great Britain
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Gianni D’Amato is Professor at the University of Neuchâtel, Director of the ‘NCCR – on the move’ and of the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM). His main foci include citizenship, mobility, populism and the history of migration. After his MA in Sociology at the University of Zurich, D’Amato focused his PhD Thesis on citizenship and on migrants’ integration in a comparative perspective.
He is author of Vom Ausländer zum Bürger. Der Streit um die politische Integration von Einwanderern in Deutschland, Frankreich und der Schweiz (3rd edition, 2005) and co-authered recently “Politicising immigration in times of crisis: empirical evidence from Switzerland”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2021.1936471 (2021), “The Swiss Rationale of Integration Policies. Balancing Federalism, Consociationalism and Direct Democracy”, in: J. Franzke and J. Ruano (Eds.), Local Integration Policy of Migrants. European Experiences and Challenges (73-85). London: Palgrave (2020) and “Immigration and populist political strategies. The Swiss case in European perspective“, In G. Titzi, J. Mackert & B. S. Turner (Eds.), Populism and the Crisis of Democracy, Volume 3 : Migration, Gender and Religion (pp. 48–65). London: Routledge (2019). 
Gianni D’Amato
University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Pasi Saukkonen is a political scientist working at the City of Helsinki Executive Office, Urban Research and Statistics unit. Previously he has been working as Senior Researcher and as the Director of The Finnish Foundation for Cultural Policy Research (Cupore) and in different positions at the University of Helsinki. He holds an Adjunct Professorship at the University of Helsinki (political science) and at the University of Jyväskylä (cultural policy). He has published widely on e.g. nationalism and national identity, integration policies and politics in a multicultural society.
Pasi Saukkonen
City of Helsinki Executive Office, Urban Research and Statistics unit, Finland
- Inese Šūpule, Dr.sc.soc., is a sociologist and researcher at the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. She holds a Doctoral Degree in political sociology from University of Latvia. Since 2000, she is working in the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences in a capacity of senior researcher. Her doctoral degree in political sociology has been defended with the doctoral thesis on the topic: „The Social Construction of Ethnic and National Identities in Interaction: the Case of Latvia” (2012). Since 2014, she is involved in different projects of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. Currently she is working on the project “Value (trans)formation in uncertain times: social cohesion and neoliberal order in Latvia” (2020-2021). Among other tasks she is working on the publication on shared values by (or at least equally widespread among) the two major ethnolinguistic communities in Latvia, as well as other values and attitudes that are still rooted primarily in people’s ethnic and/or linguistic self-identification.
Inese Šūpule
University of Latvia, Latvia
- Adrian Favell is Chair in Sociology and Social Theory and director of the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds as well as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He was formerly a research associate of CEE, Sciences Po, Paris, Professor of Sociology at UCLA and Professor of European and International Studies at Aarhus University. He is the author of various works on migration, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cities, including Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain (1998), Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe (2008), a collection of essays, Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agendas in Migration Studies (2015), and a work in migration theory, The Integration Nation: Immigration and Colonial Power in Liberal Democracies (2022). Most recently, he has led the UK ESRC project, Northern Exposure: Race, Nation and Disaffection in “Ordinary” Towns and Cities after Brexit. Website: www.adrianfavell.com.
Adrian Favell
University of Leeds, Great Britain
- Giedrė Blažytė is a researcher at NGO “Diversity Development Group” and Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (Institute of Sociology, Department of Ethnic Studies). Her scientific interests lie in contemporary migration issues related to the topics of family migration, intersection of migration and gender, integration of beneficiaries of international protection, irregular migration, fundamental rights and equal opportunities. As a project executor and independent expert Giedrė has been involved in different projects and migration research on national and international level. Giedrė holds a PhD in Social Sciences (Sociology).
Giedrė Blažytė
Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Lithuania
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Lea Klarenbeek was trained as a political theorist (LSE; University of Amsterdam). Her work focuses on the conceptualization of ‘integration’ in current migration research. Her main claim is that integration is often wrongfully conceptualised and measured as an individual achievement. For her dissertation, she has been developing a theoretical framework of relational integration as an epistemic and methodological alternative to conventional integration research. After a postdoc at the Justitia Centre for Advanced Studies in Frankfurt, she now works as a researcher and policy advisor at EMMA in The Hague.
Related publications:
Klarenbeek, L. M., Weide, M. (2020). The participation paradox: demand for and fear of immigrant participation. Critical Policy Studies, 14 (2), 214–232.
Klarenbeek, L. M. (2019). Reconceptualising ‘integration as a two-way process’. Migration studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnz033
Klarenbeek, L. M. (2019). Relational integration: a response to Willem Schinkel. Comparative Migration Studies, 7(20). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-019-0126-6 
Lea Klarenbeek
EMMA, Holland
- Birgit Glorius is a full professor for human geography with focus on European migration research at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Her research interests and majority of publications are in the fields of international migration, social geographies of rural regions and geographies of knowledge. During the last decade, she intensively worked in the area of European mobility, educational and labour migration, as well as in the field of forced migration, asylum politics, and integration. Her current research deals with the integration of refugees in small towns and rural regions in Germany, focusing on the role of the receiving society. In Germany, she is board member of the German Network on Refugee Research and head of the advisory board to the research department of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Germany.
Birgit Glorius
Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany