Faculty: Faculty of Political and Social Sciences

  • Stijn Joye

    Stijn Joye is associate professor at the Department of Communication Sciences (UGent) and member of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Center for Journalism Studies and Health, Media & Society. He was a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Visiting Fellow at LSE and at Sichuan University. His areas of research include international news reporting with a focus on the representation of suffering and crises alongside an interest in issues of domestication, colonial heritage and the practices of seriality and artistic imitation in film. Joye is Associate Editor of International Communication Gazette, book review editor of Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, former chair of ECREA’s International & Intercultural Communication section, current vice-chair of ‘TWG Ethics of Mediated Suffering’ and treasurer of NeFCA and vice-chair of NeFCA’s Intercultural Communication & Diversity section. In 2020, he joined the FWO Review College 2021-2023.

  • Peter Stevens

    Peter A. J. Stevens (BA, MA Ghent University, MA, PhD Warwick University) is Professor in Qualitative Research Methods at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium). Stevens’ research interests cover the areas of sociology of education and race/ethnic relations. His work has been published in leading journals in the field of education, race and ethnic relations and sociology, including Review of Educational Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Sociology of Education. He is editor with Gary Dworkin of The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education (Palgrave, 2019) and editor of Qualitative Data Analysis. Key Approaches (Sage, 2023). Stevens is currently supervising research on ethnic in-out group relationships in school settings.

  • Robin Vandevoordt

    Robin Vandevoordt is an Associate Professor in Migration studies at CESSMIR. He leads ethnographic research on two topics: social movements in solidarity with people on the move, and the role of different actors entangled in migration and integration policies. Before joining Ghent University, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre and at the University of Antwerp’s Centre for Research on Ecological and Social Change (CRESC).

  • Melissa Ceuterick

    Melissa Ceuterick is a postdoctoral researcher at Hedera UGent. In her PhD she focused on the impact of migration on traditional medicine use among people of Andean descent in the UK (Bradford University, 2009). Her research is situated at the intersections between 1) medication use and identity and 2) migration and health. She coordinates and supervises qualitative research in these areas, i.e. Belspo BENZONET, BENZOCARE, REMEDI; IBOF Opioid-related Stigma and FWO Red Noses Culture-Sensitive Stigma Survey, STAMINA. Since 2017 she is a lecturer-in-charge of the Health Sociology and Social Demography Seminar (UGent), where students develop a Community Service Learning project on health or migration, and of various health sociology courses (UGent-VUB). As of 2023 she is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Society for Health and Medical Sociology.

  • Lesley Hustinx

    Lesley Hustinx is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Social Theory at the Sociology Department of Ghent University. Her primary areas of interest are social theory, political sociology, critical citizenship studies, and the sociology of the nonprofit sector and volunteering. Her research focuses on contemporary developments in citizenship and participation, including the citizenship practices of newcomers, the underrepresentation of ethnic groups in blood donations, and social inequality in volunteering.

  • Marlies Casier

    Marlies Casier is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Work, where she conducts research on solidarity with people on the move. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at Ghent University, with a thesis on the transnational political activism of Kurds from Turkey. She has published extensively on her research in academic journals and books. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, a Master’s degree in Moral Sciences and a Master’s degree in Conflict and Development Studies. After completing her PhD, Marlies worked for 12 years as international policy officer at Sensoa, the Flemish centre of expertise on sexual health, which she combined with a position as a guest lecturer at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, where she taught in the Master of Science in Conflict and Development Studies, the Master of Sociology and the Erasmus Mundus Master in Global Studies.

  • Wai Chu Starry Chung

    Starry Chung is a researcher at the Department of Conflict and Development, specialising in transnational diaspora politics, resistance, and social movements. Her research examines how diasporic communities engage in transnational activism, shaping global debates on migration, identity, and policy-making. She focuses on grassroots mobilisation, systemic change, and the role of identity and solidarity in diaspora politics. She holds a B.S.Sc. in Global Studies from CUHK and an Erasmus Mundus Double Master’s in Global Studies from the University of Vienna and Ghent University. Her interdisciplinary training provides expertise in critical theory, historical analysis, and qualitative research. She has contributed to graduate-level teaching, supporting students in developing critical perspectives and research methodologies. Fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, she brings a global perspective to her research and actively engages with diverse academic communities.

  • Toyah Van der Poten

    Toyah Van der Poten is a PhD researcher at the Department of sociology, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent university. She has a history in documentary filmmaking and social-artistic work. The project she is working on focuses on the under representation of minorities in blood donation and questions the organizational field of blood donation. The lived experiences of missing minorities are studied through field work in Ghent (BE) and Leicester (UK).

  • Naïma Lafrarchi

    Naïma Lafrarchi holds a law degree, Master of Science in Instructional and Educational Science, and a Master in Educational Science specialisation ‘Curriculum Development and Innovation’. Lafrarchi also worked at the Knowledge Centre of the Higher Institute for Family Sciences of Odisee University College (Brussels) as a project supervisor and were she conducted research regarding religious ideals of Flemish Muslim parents and Muslim youngers in Belgium/Flanders (Odisee). She is a former lecturer in the Master’s programme in Islamic Theology and Religious Studies (KU Leuven). Her first book ‘Does religion makes a difference?’ is launched in 2017 in presence of the Minister of Education, Hilde Crevits, as well as national and international experts. Currently, she is working on a research project which aims to develop a didactical-pedagogical tool to support history teachers in Flemish secondary education to deal with controversial and historical sensitive topics.

  • Lies Saelens

    Lies Saelens obtained a Master of Science in Theoretical and Experimental Psychology at the University of Ghent in July 2022. Since the 1st of September 2022, Lies has been working as a PhD researcher within the research groups Hedera (Health and Demographic Research) and CuDOS (Cultural Diversity: Opportunities & Socialisation) at the Department of Sociology. Her project focuses on mental health stigma among ethnic minority and majority adolescents in Flanders and examines how the school context plays a role in this, more specific, social relationships with peers and teachers, the school culture, the school structure and the mental health school policy. In doing so, she will use a large-scale quantitative dataset in combination with in-depth interviews. She is working under supervision of Prof. Piet Bracke, Dr. Melissa Ceuterick and Dr. Fanny D’hondt. 

  • Julija Kekstaite

    Julija Kekstaite is doctoraatsonderzoeker Sociologie aan de Universiteit Gent en lid van het interfacultair Centrum voor de Sociale Studie van Migratie en Vluchten (CESSMIR). Haar werk onderzoekt migratiebeheer, solidariteit en verzet tegen verschillende vormen van racisme die in hedendaags Europa door de staat gesanctioneerd worden. Met behulp van etnografische methoden onderzoekt ze momenteel de grassrootsmobilisatie voor/met geïllegaliseerde migranten aan de grens tussen Litouwen en Wit-Rusland en de raciale dynamieken van migratiebeheer in Litouwen.

  • Jolien Tegenbos

    Junior researcher with 8 years of experience in the fields of conflict, displacement, humanitarianism and university development cooperation. I have a master’s degree in History and in Conflict and Development Studies. My doctoral research focuses on conflict mobility dynamics and history from within a refugee camp-setting in Uganda. During my doctoral studies, I conducted archival research and 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda, and in eastern and northeast DR Congo. I worked more closely on issues related to land, humanitarian authority, return and repatriation, and the logics of historicity in the camp.

  • Camille Wets

    After obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing in 2017, Camille Wets graduated as a Master of Science in Sociology at the University of Ghent in September 2019. For her master thesis, she focused on the psychosocial well-being of unaccompanied refugee minors in Flemish foster care families. In September 2020, Camille started working as a PhD researcher on the BELSPO funded REMEDI project. The REMEDI project (2020-2023) aims to gain understanding in general practitioners’ decision-making regarding patients with a migration background with mental health problems in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. Based at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, she is working under the supervision of Prof. Piet Bracke and Dr. Melissa Ceuterick (Department of Sociology, Hedera research group).

  • A. Tancrède Pagès

    A. Tancrède Pagès is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Social Work and Pedagogy and the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at University of Ghent. He received his ReMa in the Modern History and International Relations program from the University of Groningen. His research interests include solidarity and resistance politics at the urban level, contentious solidarity and humanitarianism, direct/horizontal democracy, and political theory. His current project investigates squats as spaces of solidarity with illegalized migrants and refugees and intersectional identity formation in heterogeneous collectives.