Lea Müller Funk

As a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Lea is currently part of the Horizon2020 project Migration Governance and Asylum Crises (MAGYC) where she studies migration governance and dynamics of South–South migration flows in North Africa, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa and the construction of crises discourse from a comparative perspective. She leads the data collection about migration flows from Libya to Tunisia and Niger and respective policy responses.

 Lea was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam (2017-2019) and the University of Oxford (2016-2017). Her Marie Curie project Syrian Imaginations of Europe (SYRMAGINE) analysed the ways in which Syrian refugees undertake and experience (im)mobility and why. It focused on migration decision-making processes of Syrian refugees settling in two of Syria’s neighbouring countries (Turkey and Lebanon) and examined how their imaginations of Europe affect their attitudes to seek asylum in European countries.

 Lea holds a joint PhD degree in Politics and Arabic Studies (Sciences Po Paris / Vienna University). Her dissertation studied Egyptian migrant activism in Paris and Vienna during and after the Arab Uprisings.