My bio

I hold a PhD in social and political sciences, awarded in 1998, by the European University Institute. Previously, I studied political science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Aix-en-Provence where I specialized on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region while learning Arabic.

I have lived and worked in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Currently, I am teaching migration governance and international cooperation at the College of Europe (Natolin Campus). I am also a research associate at the Tunis-based Research Institute on the Contemporary Maghreb (IRMC). From February to July 2020, I directed the Chair in Migration Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies IMéRA, Aix-Marseille University. Prior to this, I was part-time professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (European University Institute, Florence) where I supervised and managed interdisciplinary research projects on migration policies and developed field surveys mobilizing EU and non-EU partner institutions (in North and sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus).

My publications and major interests focus on the expansion of international regulatory systems and bilateral/regional patterns of cooperation, and on the diffusion and internalization of norms and practices pertaining to the “governance” of international migration, especially with reference to MENA and African countries.

Finally, I am a member of the scientific committee of the Laboratory of Critical Studies on Forced Migration based at the University of Milan (Italy), an external member of the International Justice and Human Rights Centre (IJHR, Edge Hill University, UK) and one of the coordinators of the research strand “External dimension of EU migration and asylum policies” at the Academy of Law and Migration (ADiM, Viterbo, Italy).