February 10, 2023

12:00pm-1:00pm EDT
E40-496, Pye Conference Room

Refugees Revitalizing Emptied Spain

About the speaker:

Susan Akram is a Clinical Professor at the Boston University School of Law and the Director of the International Human Rights Clinic. Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee, forced migration, and human and civil rights issues, with an interest in the Middle East, the Arab, and Muslim world. She is currently leading the "Refugees Revitalizing Emptied Spain" project, which would place refugees and asylum seekers in municipalities that are struggling to survive in the face of massive population loss, as young people move to larger cities in search of economic opportunities.

March 1, 2023

12:30pm-2:00pm EDT
Room 09-255

Enhancing the benefits of human mobility through development interventions

About the speaker:

David Khoudour (he/him) is Global Human Mobility Adviser within the Recovery Solution and Human Mobility Team at the UNDP Crisis Bureau in New York City, where he coordinates UNDP work on migration and forced displacement. Prior to his current assignment, David worked as Regional Human Mobility Adviser at the UNDP Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama and, before that, as Adviser for Migration and Development at the UNDP Colombia Office, supporting the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia in its response to the Venezuelan displacement crisis. He is also the co-chair of the KNOMAD Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Special Issues. Before joining UNDP in 2018, David was the Head of the Migration and Skills Unit at the OECD Development Centre, in Paris, and the chair of the KNOMAD TWG on Policy and Institutional Coherence. Until 2010, he was a researcher at the CEPII, a French economic think tank, and a lecturer at HEC Paris, the University Paris Nanterre and Sciences Po, from where he holds a PhD in Economics. David was also a Fulbright scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, as well as a professor of economics and the head of the Observatory on international migration at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogota.

March 15, 2023

1:00pm-2:00pm ET
E40-496, Pye Conference Room

Crossing the Divide: Rural to Urban Migration in Developing Countries

About the speaker:

Robert E.B. Lucas is Professor of Economics at Boston University. His research has focused largely, though not exclusively, on developing countries. Most of the contributions are empirical with a few theory papers, encompassing international and internal migration, employment and human resources, income distribution and inter-generational inequality, international trade and industry, sharecropping, and the environment. External service has involved being Chief Technical Adviser to the Malaysia Human Resource Development Program, a member of the Advisory Committee to the India US Business Council, the Delegation to India by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the G8 Global Remittances Working Group, the Steering Committee for the Global Research Competition of the Global Development Network, and as Chair of the Inter-University Committee on International Migration. A recipient of a Kennedy Scholarship from the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Chanan Yavor Prize for the best paper in development economics, and the Gitner Prize for excellence in teaching (twice). Professor Lucas has also worked with the World Bank, ADB, FAO, ILO, OECD, USAID, the Governments of Botswana, Bolivia, and Sweden, and is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Center for International Studies. His publications include seven books, the most recent of which are Migration and Development: The Role for Development Aid (2019) and Crossing the Divide: Rural to Urban Migration in Developing Countries (2021).

April 21, 2023

12:00pm-1:15pm EDT
E40-496, Pye Conference Room

About the speaker:

Justin Gest is an Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He is the author of six books, primarily on the politics of immigration and demographic change—all from Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press. His research has been published in journals including the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Comparative Political Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Global Governance, Global Policy, International Migration Review, Migration Studies, Polity, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the editor of Silent Citizenship: The Politics of Marginality in Unequal Democracies (Routledge, 2016), and special issues of Citizenship Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.