Who are we

Milena Belloni is the key investigator in this project. She is an ethnographer specialized in migration and refugee studies. Milena has conducted extensive fieldwork in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Italy and Holland. Her research mainly concerns refugees’ migration dynamics and integration pathways, transnational refugee families, migrant smuggling, and ethnographic methods. Her study on the migration of Eritreans to Europe, The Big Gamble, is published by the University of California Press (2019). For more information on her work see https://unitn.academia.edu/MilenaBelloni

Other team members

Scientific supervision:

Ellen Desmet is an Assistant Professor of Migration Law. She teaches Belgian, European and international migration law, coordinates the migration law component of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic, and co-lectures legal anthropology. Ellen’s research interests are situated in the field of asylum and migration law, with particular attention for human and children’s rights implications, as well as social-scientific perspectives. Ellen is the co-promotor of "Exiled and Separated" at the University of Ghent.
Gert Verschraegen is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Antwerp, where he is currently serving as the head of the department of Sociology. His research interests cover the fields of cultural sociology, theoretical sociology and the sociology of science and knowledge. Gert is the promotor of "Exiled and Separated" at the University of Antwerp.

Collaborators in audio-visual research:

Marta Meers is a film student at Sint-Lukas Brussels. She collaborates as a filmmaker and photographer in the project. She works on the visualization of "Exiled and Separated" using the medium of short documentary. Her audiovisual work focuses on human rights, migration and the environment thus this is also seen in previous works. Information on previous projects can be found on her online portfolio
Alem Hbtyes is a film director in training. He studied literature and film making in Khartoum. Since 2017 he has collaborated with Donkeyshot, a film house production based in Zurich that realises films on inter-cultural topics with a focus on Northern Africa and the Middle East. He is currently working on the film called SOLE, focusing on the lives of Eritrean young footballer in Sudan (still to be released). In Exiled and Separated, Alem has been responsible for collecting video material concerning Eritrean families who are stuck in Khartoum waiting for their family reunification.

Research assistants

Yonas Sium Hagos is a PhD student at the Universita' Urbaniana in Rome. He is conducting a study on the institution of marriage among Eritrean families in the diaspora. He has been a key research assistant for the realisation of "Exiled and Separated".
Sara De Hertog has more than 7 years of experience in migration practice and law. During her MA thesis at the University of Antwerp, she has conducted research with Milena on family reunification in Belgium. She is currently working at the Federal Ombudsman (http://www.federaalombudsman.be/homepage).