Research Projects

The importance of recognizing and understanding the digital leisure activities of forcibly displaced populations, often overlooked in research focused on utility-driven ends, is crucial for creating meaningful humanitarian interventions and ensuring accurate narratives about these communities.

This project aims to advance theoretical understandings of power differentials that are embodied in the use of technologies to promote livelihoods and financial inclusion for refugees. It involves a combination of fieldwork observations, interviews and focus groups to examine technology adoption by Venezuelan women refugees and humanitarian actors in the context of a digital work program in the city of Boa Vista (Brazil).

The Netherlands has become a dynamic migration society, and active policies to facilitate immigrants' adaptation to Dutch society are needed. Traditionally, journalism fosters shared understanding among citizens, being vital for cultural adaptation. This PhD aims therefore to understand how immigrants consume news and the effects of news consumption on acculturation.

What does it mean for a newcomer 'to thrive'? Is it having a home, a meaningful job, lots of friends? When newcomers feel like they belong in a city, they will feel more at home and their well-being and participation will increase. Through Becoming a Rotterdammer, we seek newcomers who excel in belonging, potentially discovering strategies that hasten their sense of home, which others can emulate.

The research project aims to analysis of counter-hegemonic narratives produced and shared in digital media by Haitian immigrants in Brazil during 2015 and 2017. The analysis demonstrates how these narratives evidence racism experienced by these immigrants residing in Brazil.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, over 6.74 million Ukrainians have fled, with 215,200 resettling in the UK through initiatives like the Ukraine Family and Sponsorship Schemes (Home Office, 2024). These schemes represent a shift in UK refugee policy, placing responsibility on private citizens to host refugees with financial support (Burrell, 2022). This research examines British hosts' perspectives on their encounters with Ukrainian refugees, initiated online via platforms like Facebook and transitioning into domestic spaces.

This project examines how mediated peace discourses on the Russian-Ukrainian war are constructed and received. While media narratives shape public and political agendas, their production and impact remain underexplored. Using a multi-method approach, the study analyzes how key stakeholders shape and reinterpret these narratives across media platforms.

The purpose of this project is to analyze the communication and transnational activism of Brazilian immigrants in Barcelona, Spain, which can be linked to the current context of economic and political crisis in Brazil, focusing on the collective actions of these immigrants against the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff.