The TRANSMIT-MENA team at Humboldt-University
Dr. Simon Ruhnke [BIM-HU]
Dr. Simon Ruhnke a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Institute for empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM) at the Humboldt-University and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Utah. As research coordinator of TRANSMIT Simon oversees all research activities in the MENA region, including the primary data collections in Lebanon and Turkey and outreach, knowledge transfer and collaboration initiatives. As a health economist his research focuses on the intersection of migration, health and healthcare access. As part of TRANSMIT he also investigates the dynamics of migration decision making, access to mobility and resulting selection affects.
M.Sc. Laura Hertner [BIM-HU]
Laura Hertner, M.Sc. Psychology, works as a research associate on the impact of (refugee) migration-related factors on mental health and researches health services regarding their barriers for people with migration history. In TRANSMIT, she has been strengthening the Mental Health and psychological distress research focus in the MENA team since January 2023. Laura believes that mental health cannot be captured entirely at the level of the individual, but requires a holistic view of the socio-ecological context. Laura is doing her PhD at Charité Universitätsmedizin Campus Mitte in the research group transcultural psychiatry on susbtance use in the context of refugee migration.
Dr. Nader Talebi [BIM-HU]
Dr. Nader Talebi is a Berlin-based researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He studied software engineering and sociology and finished his PhD at Lancaster University on state power and revolution in Iran. As a researcher at the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM) and before at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim, he is interested in studying states, social movements, nationalism and migration in the Middle East as well as politics of knowledge production on the region. In particular, he explores regimes of mobility and their relations with narratives of migration and citizenship in the ME. Apart from being part of the TRANSMIT team, he co-founded and currently co-leading MERGE, a collaborative research network bringing together scholars interested in migration and the Middle East.
M.A. Nora Kühnert [BIM-HU]
Nora Kühnert studied cultural anthropology (B.A./M.A.) and psychology (B.Sc./M.A. with clinical focus) and works as a research assistant in the project TRANSMIT and the research coordination office at BIM as well as the research networking unit of the DeZIM research community. As a member of the Migration, Mental and Physical Health and Health Promotion Department at BIM, she is also part of the working group "Transcultural Psychiatry" of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and strengthens the research focus on Mental Health and psychological suffering experiences in the TRANSMIT-MENA team. She also provides support to the project coordination regarding administration and third mission.
Fadi Wabi [BIM-HU]
Fadi Wahbi is a student assistant at BIM and master’s student of sociology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universtität. His main areas of focus are quantitative methods, migration and integration, social inequality, economic sociology, racism, and sociology of crime. In his bachelor’s thesis, he examined how different migration and integration politics, geohistorical factors, and social policies affect crime rates among immigrants and their children in different countries.
M.Sc. Lidwina Gundacker [IAB]
Lidwina Gundacker is a migration and integration researcher with a background in sociology, politics and economics, based at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, Germany. In the TRANSMIT project, she is involved in all aspects of the survey data collections in Lebanon and Turkey. In her research, she targets the integration processes of refugees, the selectivity of migration processes as well as methodological aspects of data collection and data quality.