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Marie McAuliffe (PhD) is an international migration expert with over 30 years of experience in migration research, policy and practice. She is currently the part-time Director of the Migration Shift Hub at the PoliSync Centre for International Policy Engagement in Geneva, Switzerland, while also delivering independent services as a senior consultant to UN agencies, governments and industry. Prior to this, she served for a decade as the head of the Migration Research and Publications Division at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva and was the Editor of IOM’s flagship World Migration Report. Marie is a senior fellow at the Global Migration Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and a Sir Roland Wilson Fellow at the School of Demography at the Australian National University (ANU). She serves as an independent consultant on the Methodological Assurance and Review Panel on Migration Statistics for the UK’s Office of National Statistics. She is a member of MIT’s Global Technology Review Panel, and the IUSSP’s panel on international migration. Between 2016 and 2025 she curated the World Economic Forum’s Migration Transformation Map.
Marie has researched, published and edited widely in academic and policy spheres on migration and displacement, and led five editions of IOM’s biennial World Migration Report, transforming it into the leading global reference report on migration and displacement. Marie serves on the editorial boards of scientific journals International Migration, Migration Studies and Migration and Development, and was an Associate Editor of the Harvard Data Science Review. Marie previously served as an elected board member of the Academic Council on the UN System, a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, and as co-chair of the World Bank’s KNOMAD thematic working group on migration data and demography. She has been regularly called upon to advise Presidents, Ministers, senior officials and CEOs on migration and displacement, including former UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in his capacity as Chair of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.
Marie has led research and policy teams in government and consulted to IOM, ILO as well as in the private sector, including in South Korea, Russia, Central Asia and Türkiye. For three years (2012–2014), Marie directed the $6.5 million Australian irregular migration research program, which resulted in an ANU Press book edited by Marie (with Khalid Koser). Marie was awarded a Sir Roland Wilson scholarship in 2015 to complete doctoral research at ANU on the displacement and migration of Hazara refugees. She is the 2018 recipient of the Charles Price Prize in demography for outstanding doctoral research.
Anindita Chatterjee is an anthropologist whose work engages with the disciplines of Sociology,
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Health studies. Her research focuses on themes
of informal labour, migration, urbanisation, public health and ageing. After obtaining her Ph.D.
in 2019 from Jawaharlal Nehru University, she has held research appointments at Max Weber
Stiftung IBO that was funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education, and at the
Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Dr Chatterjee has taught in India,
Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, and she possesses more than ten
years of experience in conducting research in multiple sites in India, Bangladesh, and the
United States.
Dr Chatterjee’s research encompasses an examination of social inequalities, cultural and
political conflicts, and evolving nature of urban spaces around situated contexts. Anindita
Chatterjee’s book: Attachment, Aspiration and Inequality in Domestic labour in India: The
Bonds of Service (Routledge, UK, 2026), examines how affect operates within structures of
inequality, shaping both agency and vulnerability between female migrant workers and
employers in three cities in India. Besides studying employer-worker relations, the project
broadens its scope to focus on worker relations in their own squatter settlements to explore the
construction of gender identities. Dr. Chatterjee’s current project explores on ageing, wellbeing
and migration. She looks at the intersection of ageing and migration, especially for migrant
workers, and plan to undertake policy studies to reduce social discrimination and stratification
among elderly lower income group people who lack access to welfare schemes in the informal
labour market.
Dr. Chatterjee has presented her research findings at multiple international and national
conferences over the past sixteen years and she also has a record of producing collaborative
research with an international and local network of scholars.
Dr. Harshita Sinha holds a PhD from the Department of International Development, London
School of Economics and Political Science. Her research comparatively examines informal
migrant workers’ access to welfare across sub-national welfare ecosystems in India through the
lens of substantive citizenship. Her research looks in particular at the implementation of labour-
based welfare rights through the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) welfare
boards and the e-Shram portal, examining how digitalisation, formalisation, and sub-national
welfare regimes shape migrant workers’ access to social rights. She has an expanding research
agenda on climate-induced mobility and risk. She has contributed to policy outputs such as the
UNICEF study on Assessing Portability of Social Protection for Migrant Children in India; the
ODI paper on Transforming social protection for irreversible climate change-induced loss and
damage.
Harshita has engaged extensively in policy and research with organisations such as ODI Global,
the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, the International Centre of Tax and Development,
Centre for Policy Research, and ICRW, among others. Her work on informality, migration and
social protection has been published in journals such as Global Social Policy and Urbanisation.
She has also written widely for newspapers and other media, including the Indian Express, India
Development Review, LSE International Development Blog, and The Wire, among others.
Harshita received the LSE Life Research Prize in 2019 and was selected as the India Migration
Fellow by IMN and Bandhu Urban Tech, where she worked at the intersection of research and
grounded intervention for migrant groups. She founded Voices of Informality, a platform that
translates ethnographic research on informal workers and migrants into accessible narratives and
resources co-created with civil society partners for advocacy and policy debates.
Dr. Irshad CV completed PhD in Economics (Specialisation: Health Economics) from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He completed a bachelor’s and master’s in Economics from the University of Calicut. His Ph.D. thesis titled “Healthy Ageing in India: A Mixed Methods Approach” explored various research questions on healthy ageing in India using both quantitative and qualitative tools. His thesis work proposed the first multi- dimensional Healthy Ageing Index (HAI) for the health status measurement of older adults in India. Two of the core works of his thesis was published in the Journal of Population Ageing, an official journal of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford by Springer. His extended thesis work was also presented at a conference conducted by the Asian Development Bank, Manila, with full funding support from the Government of Japan. Besides his Ph.D. thesis work, he has been extensively collaborating with various researchers in Gerontology, and published works in reputed journals. In 2021, he received a research grant from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, to study social frailty status among older adults in India.
Dr Joe Thomas was the Secretary General of the 15-country Intergovernmental Global Commission on Ageing in Developing Countries. (2013 to 2018). Hosted policy dialogue on ageing in 15 countries and edited a Book. Ageing: Learning from the Global South, based on the lessons from policy dialogue in 8 countries.
Dr Joe Thomas (MSc, PhD, FRSPH) is a global public health scholar and policy advocate whose recent work focuses on ageing, ageism, and the rights of older persons. He is the Global Public Health Chair at the Sustainable Policy Solutions Foundation and the Director of compliance and learning at the Australian Institute of Community and Health Management (AICHM). Professor Joe Thomas was the Associate Dean and Head of the School of Public Health at MITWPU.
Dr Thomas was the executive director of the Intergovernmental partnership of 27 governments, Partners in Population and Development. PPD is a Permanent observer at the UN General Assembly. In that capacity, Dr Thomas has spoken on issues related to migration, sustainable development, gender equity, AMR and SRHR at the UN General Assembly.
Dr Thomas was the technical consultant to WHO, lived and worked in the UK, Hong Kong, Nepal, East Timor and Australia. Carried out short-term consultations in more than 15 countries.
His writing on Kerala’s “ageing crisis” and on ageism in healthcare argues for a shift from welfare-style schemes to rights-based, locally governed systems of long-term care, home-based support, and age-friendly environments, with particular attention to gender, caste, and migration-related inequities in later life.
At the global level, he contributes to debates around the UN Open-ended Working Group on Ageing, advocating for international standards that guarantee older people’s right to health, social inclusion, and protection from age-based discrimination in health systems. Throughout this work, Dr Thomas emphasises that ageing populations are not passive dependants but rights-holders and contributors whose dignity, participation, and functional ability must be at the centre of policy and practice.
Dr Thomas is the Editor-in-Chief of “Critical Public Health, author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and four books. His public health teachings cover health diplomacy, structural determinants of health, public health theory and pedagogy, primary health vs primary health care, Gender, equity, and rights. He has authored the SMPH syllabus for three universities.
Kuldeepsingh Rajput has an enriching experience spanning over fifteen years in the fields of
academia, research and practice. He has worked as a Visiting Faculty at the Department of
Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune University for four years and as an Assistant Professor at a
teacher education institute in Pune for eight years. Along with this, he has worked as a faculty
for the course Diploma in Youth Development and Social Change run by the Centre for
Lifelong Learning, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai in collaboration with the
Centre for Youth Development and Activities (CYDA), Pune. He was also a resource person
for many modules of the Certificate Course designed by TISS and Nehru Yuva Kendra
(Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, GoI).
He is UGC-NET qualified in Sociology and Education. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology in
which he has attempted to examine the poly-victimisation and hidden vulnerabilities among
the young migrant construction workers. His articles are published in reputed peer-reviewed
journals and daily newspapers like The Indian Express, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Sakal
etc. His research interest lies in internal labour migration, policy dynamics, and education of
children of seasonal migrants, politicisation of migrants, social security, urban migrant youth,
urban informality and migration, inclusive cities, and qualitative-driven mixed methodology.
Shahana Purveen is an independent researcher and has completed her Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Her Ph.D. thesis focuses on inter-state migration, specifically emphasizing livelihood and identity issues of migrant taxi drivers in Mumbai during the era of the platform economy. She has done M.Phil. from TISS, and her M.Phil. dissertation focuses on “Child Labour in the Lock Industry of Aligarh.” She has been awarded the Erasmus Mundus PhD Exchange Scholarship to visit the University of Oxford. During her stay in Oxford, she conducted small research with Indian migrants working in restaurants. Following her enriching experience at the University of Oxford, she was awarded a DAAD-ICDD (German Academic Exchange Service – International Centre for Development and Decent Work) fellowship to accomplish her Ph.D. She has presented her research at various national and international conferences in India and abroad. Additionally, she has contributed to the academic community by publishing her research work in select edited books and journals. She regularly takes sessions on qualitative research methodology and related themes.
He holds a Masters in Economics and Population Studies. He has an M.Phil and a Doctorate in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. He has served as an Assistant Professor at Pillai’s Institute for Management Studies and Research (PIMSR), Mumbai, and ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad. He was a former Research Fellow at the Speakers Research Initiative Cell (SRIC), New Delhi.
Bhupesh Chintamani is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of
Economics at Symbiosis Law School, under Symbiosis International
University, Pune. Previously, he has worked as Assistant Professor at
Chhatrapati Shahu Institute of Business Education and Research (CSIBER),
Kolhapur. There, he taught economics subjects to postgraduate students of
Quantitative Economics. He possesses over a decade of academic
experience in teaching and research. Prior, he has served as visiting faculty
at several prestigious institutions in Pune, including Vaikunth Mehta
National Institute of Cooperative Management (VAMNICOM), Symbiosis
School of Economics (SSE), and Gokhale Institute of Politics and
Economics (GIPE). He obtained his doctorate degree in economics from
Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, with his dissertation
concentrating on “Economic Aspects of International Remittances in India:
Post Liberalization.” His doctoral study presents a thorough examination of
remittance dynamics at both micro and macro levels, utilizing several data
sources to deliver a nuanced understanding of the topic, particularly
highlighting a primary survey conducted in the state of Maharashtra.
In research, he worked with the UNFPA project as a Research Officer for a
year (using qualitative tools and software) and assisted in the research work
in the Input-Output Research Association (IORA) centre at GIPE. Recently,
he completed a project titled “Assessment of Competitiveness and
Sustainability of Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) in India” (2021-22),
funded by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), at VAMNICOM.
His research interests are primarily aligned in unravelling the complexities
of migration and remittances, and agriculture development have published
several papers in high-indexed journals. He has also presented papers at
numerous national and international conferences, including Asian
Population Association Conference in Indonesia, Asian Academy of
International Law in Hong Kong SAR, Indian Society of Labour Economics,
University of Hyderabad, and Punjabi University, Punjab. He is currently
working on the perspective of migration i.e. “An Exodus Affluent Indian
Taking Citizenship in Other Countries”.
Chitra is a dynamic and outcome-oriented professional with a distinguished career in academia, research, and policy formulation. With a Ph.D. from Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Chitra has demonstrated a deep commitment to advancing academic standards and offering valuable insights in policy circles. Throughout her career, Chitra has excelled in research and analysis, project coordination, grant writing, and stakeholder engagement. She is adept at developing cutting-edge curricula, coordinating field trials, and analyzing complex datasets. Her academic journey, highlighted by a thesis on “Migration to the Gulf and its Impact on Tamil Nadu 1991-2010,” underscores the expertise in migration patterns and regional development.
Professionally, Chitra has made significant contributions as a Non-Resident Associate at the Middle East Institute – New Delhi, collaborating with leading experts to analyze geopolitical developments. Her work as a Teaching Assistant at Mahatma Global Gateway and as a District Coordinator for the Tamil Nadu Migration Survey-2015 further highlights her proficiency in facilitating research, guiding students, and managing complex field projects. Additionally, Chitra’s tenure as a Project Coordinator at Human Rights Defense International showcases her ability to manage high-impact projects and drive advocacy on human rights issues. With a broad skill set that spans research, project management, grant writing, and policy advocacy, Chitra continues to contribute meaningfully to academic and policy frameworks, with a commitment to elevating standards and driving impactful change. Her research interests include migration and diaspora studies, development studies, sustainable environment, trafficking and human rights issues in Persian Gulf.