Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi is Professor of Demography at the University of Tehran and Director of the National Institute of Population Research (NIPR) of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Iran. He holds PhD degree followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Demography at the Australian Demography Program. He has served as Head of the Department of Demography of the University of Tehran (2003-2007), Head of Division of Population Research of the Institute of Social Studies (2001-2012), and Research Fellow at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute during 2010-2014. Abbasi-Shavazi has worked on various research areas including Iran’s population dynamics, family change and fertility, population policies, Muslim demography, and forced and refugee migration. He has recently completed a project report on Driving Forces of Irregular Migration among Afghans to Australia. Abbasi has published more than 100 scientific papers, project reports, books and book chapters. The Fertility Transition in Iran: Revolution and Reproduction is a result of his collaborative project with Peter McDonald and Meimanat Hosseini that was published by Springer in 2009. In collaboration with Ellen Kraly and several other distinguished scholars, Abbasi-Shavazi is preparing a book on Demography of Forced and Refugee Migration that will be published in 2017. Abbasi-Shavazi has had a significant role in promotion of population training and research at the national, regional and international levels, and has collaborated with distinguished demographers in such universities as the Australian National University, Universities of Michigan and North Carolina in the US, York University in Canada, Shanghai University in China, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research in Bangladesh, and Vienna Institute of Demography in Austria.  He is a founding member of the Asian Population Association, and served as its Vice-President (2009-2010) and President (2011-2012).  During 2010-2014, he chaired the Scientific Panel of Refugee and Forced Migration of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. He is now the Vice President of the Population Association of Iran. In addition to being Chief-Editor of the Iranian Population Studies, he is a member of Editorial Board of several national and international peer-reviewed journals including Asian Population Studies, International Migration Review, Migration and Development, Journal of the Population Association of Iran, and Demographia.  Abbasi-Shavazi has received four awards including the W.D Borrie Prize of the Australian Population Association (1997), World Prize for the Best Book of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2010), the 2011 United Nations Population Award. In 2016 he was recognised as Distinguished Author of the University of Tehran AND Distinguished Researcher of the Year of Iran in the field of Social Sciences.

Harald Bauder is the Director of the Graduate Program in Immigration and Settlement Studies and a Professor in the Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies at Ryerson University. He was the founding Academic Director of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement. His research expertise includes immigration policy and public discourse, the economic integration of migrants, critical perspectives of borders and cross-border mobility, and sanctuary policies and practices. 

Alexander Betts is Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, and a Senior Research Fellow of Green-Templeton College, at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the politics and economics of refugees, and he has also written extensively on the politics of migration and humanitarianism. His recent books include Global Migration Governance (Oxford University Press, 2012), Survival Migration (Cornell University Press, 2013), Refugee Economies (Oxford University Press, 2016), Mobilising the Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System (Penguin 2017). He has written for Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and the Guardian, and appeared on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN. He has worked as a consultant to UNHCR, IOM, UNDP, and OCHA, among others. His TED talks on Brexit and the refugee crisis have been viewed around 3 million times. He has been honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2016, and has been listed by Thinkers50 in their top 30 emerging business influencers.

Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MsC is a Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and  Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is the Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard’s only university wide Human Rights research center.   From 1997 to 2001 Bhabha founded and directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to 1997, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children’s rights and citizenship. She is the author of Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age (Princeton University Press, 2014), the editor of Children Without A State (MIT Press, 2011), and of Human Rights and Adolescence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Her current research focuses on adolescents at risk of violence, social exclusion or discrimination. She is actively engaged in several research projects in India, examining the factors that drive access of low caste girls from illiterate families to higher education, and that transform gender norms among children and adolescents. She also works on similar issues within the Roma community in Europe.  Bhabha serves on the board of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation and the Journal of Refugee Studies.

Jørgen Carling is Research Professor of migration and transnationalism studies at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). His research addresses a broad range of themes including migration theory, migration management, transnational families, remittances, and the links between migration and development. Among his most influential work is the analysis of aspiration and ability in international migration, and the associated phenomenon of ‘involuntary immobility’. He has extensive fieldwork experience and combines ethnographic data with statistical analyses in his research. He has published in all the top-ranked migration studies journals as well as in disciplinary journals in anthropology, economics, geography, and political science. He has also carried out policy-oriented work for various governmental and international agencies. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford (2005), the National University of Singapore (2010), and the University of Maastricht and UNU-MERIT United Nations University (2016). He received his doctorate in Human Geography from the University of Oslo, Norway in 2007 and attained the status of full professor in 2011.

Rodolfo Casillas R. is a senior professor and researcher at FLACSO Mexico.  Professor Casillas has conducted extensive research on Central American undocumented migration through Mexico’s Southern border. His research interests include the study of the conditions of un-recognized refugees, international transmigration through Mexico, Central American migrant children, humanitarian networks and migration, human smuggling and sex and human trafficking. He is the author of four books on trafficking in person in México as well as of multiple articles and reports (over 100) on the conditions of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico. His most recent work explores the role of organized crime in the smuggling of undocumented immigrants in Mexico. He is currently working on a volume on violence and migration. www.rodolfocasillasr.org

Pablo Ceriani is Coordinator of the Migration & Asylum Program, at the Center of Human Rights of the National University of Lanús, Argentina (UNLA). He is a professor of law at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is also Vice-Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families (CMW), and co-chair of the Working Group of the CMW and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, aimed at developing a Joint General Comment on the Human Rights of Children in the Context of International Migration. He is a member of the Advisory Board on the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. He has been a consultant to UNICEF, ILO and UNFPA on a number of initiatives on migration policies and migrants' rights. Author of numerous publications on migration policies and human rights. Member of Global Migration Policy Associates (GMPA). Former Coordinator of the Legal Clinic for Immigrants and Refugees’ Rights (University of Buenos Aires) and Coordinator of the Program on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CELS, Argentina). He holds a PhD in Human Rights (University of Valencia, Spain) and a Master in International Migration and Migration Law (European University of Madrid).

Vincent Chetail is Director of the Global Migration Centre and Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva). Professor Chetail is Editor-in-Chief of the Refugee Survey Quarterly (OUP) and General Editor of the book series Organisation internationale et relations internationales (Bruylant, Brussels) and Theory and Practice of Public International Law (Brill, Martinus Nijhoff). He is also Senior Research Associate at the Refugee Law Initiative (University of London) and member of the Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe, among other affiliations. He regularly serves as a consultant to governments, NGOs and international organizations and has extensively published in the field of migration including 12 books and 40 articles.

Michael Clemens is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he studies the economic effects and causes of migration around the world. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on migration, development, and impact evaluation, and his research has been awarded the Royal Economic Society Prize. He also serves as a Research Fellow of IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and World Development. He is the author of the book The Walls of Nations, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Previously, Clemens has been an Affiliated Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at New York University, and a consultant for the World Bank, Bain & Co., the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He has lived and worked in Colombia, Brazil, and Turkey. He received his PhD from the Department of Economics at Harvard University, specializing in economic development, public finance, and economic history.

Lakshman Dissanayake is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is also Senior Professor of Demography, University of Colombo. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett, University in the United Kingdom. He also serves as an Adjunct member of the Hugo Center for Population and Migration Research, University of Adelaide. He was the former Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, founder Director of the Colombo University Community Extension Centre, former Rector of the Sri Palee Campus of the University of Colombo. Lakshman Dissanayake’s expertise includes international migration, internal migration, irregular migration, regional demography, health demography, population dynamics and population ageing. He has published books, book chapters and numerous research articles in local and internationally reputed journals. Dr Dissanayake received his Bachelors’ Degree in Development Studies from the University of Colombo, obtaining First Class Honours in 1977. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Population Studies from the University of Colombo, Masters Degree in Demography from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and PhD from the University of Adelaide. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts (United Kingdom).