Politics, humanitarianism and migration to Europe

Professor Dorothea Hilhost is professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies. 

Her research concerns aid-society relations in humanitarian crises and recovery, with research programmes in a large variety of crisis-affected settings. In 2015 she won a prestigious VICI grant of the Netherlands Research Council for a research project on the co-incidence of disaster and conflict situations in high-conflict, low-conflict and post-conflict scenarios.

She has published widely on her topics, with 46 journal articles and 34 book chapters. Books include People, Aid and Institutions in Socio-Economic Recovery. Facing Fragilities (2016); and The Real World of NGOs: Discourse, Diversity and Development (2003). The most recent special issue she edited was with Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon on Gender, sexuality and violence in humanitarian crises, Disasters 41(S1).

Dr Susanne Jaspars is Research Associate at SOAS, University of London.

She has researched the social and political dynamics of famine, food security, and humanitarian crises for over thirty years. First combining work as an applied researcher (including for ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group in London) and practitioner, she recently completed a PhD at Bristol University on the history and politics of food aid in Sudan, and published this as a book (Food Aid in Sudan. A History of Power, Politics and Profit. Zed Books). 

Following her PhD she led a joint SOAS-ODI study on the historical, political and humanitarian dimension of migration from Darfur to Europe.  For the past ten years, she has been on the editoral board of Disasters Journal.  She is also on the board of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (executive committee). Susanne has published a number of books, academic articles and policy reports.