Youkang recently completed an MA in Social Development at the University of East Anglia. Before coming to the UK, she worked as a journalist in South Korea and was involved in the media sector for years after graduating from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul with a BA in mass communication. She has also worked as a volunteer in several NGOs in the UK and South Korea, especially related to gender and migration issues. Her interests in migration are health, gender issues and cooperation between the governmental sector and the voluntary sector.

Natalia is currently finishing her MA at the Academy of International and Political Relations in Gdynia (Poland). She is writing her dissertation on the repercussions of migration in both host and the sending countries. In the course of her internship with CESS, she will compile information about Albanian migrations.

Reeda Khader Elburai, who is doing her internship at the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies centre at the American University in Cairo, has a degree in chemical engineering from Elfateh University in Libya, and a diploma in human rights from Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden. She has worked as an interpreter and translator, and has been active in the human rights field, with work experience with several NGOs in Egypt.

Alexandra began a three-month internship with ISSER in Ghana in September 2006, having just completed a PhD in Economics at the University of the Basque Country (Bilbao). Her dissertation was entitled ‘General Economic Analysis of Migratory Movements’. Before this, she completed a MA in Economics in the University of the Basque Country (Bilbao) and a BA in the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). Currently, she works in the Public University of Navarre (Pamplona) as an assistant teacher. She has been researching the economic impact of immigration over the host country economy and in the relationship between poverty and migration. At ISSER, she is working with the project entitled ‘Social Protection for Migrant Labour in Ghana’s Pineapple Export Sector’.

Darren has a BSc in Geography from the University of Sheffield and MA in Refugee Studies from the University of East London. He has substantial experience of working with refugee communities in the UK and is currently on sabbatical from the Coventry Refugee Centre for the duration of the internship.

Emily is completing her Masters degree through the Transatlantic Masters program with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Through this program, she has also conducted studies on site at Charles University in Prague and the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris. She has interned at several NGOs, including Operation Dialogue in Toronto and the Prague Security Studies Institute in Prague. Her dissertation is on external governance and democracy promotion in the former communist states.

Having completed an MSc in Population and Development at the London School of Economics, Victoria travelled to Bangladesh in October to begin a six month internship with the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) in Dhaka. Since arriving, she has been involved in a number of activities, including acting as conference rapporteur, producing reports, and editing policy and research papers. Over the next six months she will be working extensively on the Bihari refugee community, conducting primary qualitative fieldwork in a number of camps around the country, participating in community briefings and consultative forums and preparing material for publication. She will also be contributing to an awareness raising campaign funded by the British High Commission for the improvement of regular migration from Bangladesh.