The Research Team

Josephine T. V. Greenbrook is an interdisciplinary researcher and clinician, interweaving areas of migration and community medicine, global health, and medical education, with the medical humanities and social sciences. She holds a PhD in medical law with a focus on migration medicine and physician-patient encounters, and has completed advanced degrees in psychology, law, medical ethics, sociology, and higher education. She currently serves as chair of the international interdisciplinary research platform Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society, and is a research group lead at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, and a Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine Life Sciences and the Law at the University of Edinburgh. Additionally, she serves as a scientific expert on the Swedish Ethical Review Authority, and as a lecturer and expert consultant in empirical methods, research ethics and regulation, migration medicine, culture in psychiatry, and decolonial methodologies in medicine and law. Further, she is active in forwarding empirical findings in applied settings, engaging with the public in medicine, healthcare, and the humanitarian sector. Read more about Josephine on her institutional pages at the University of Gothenburg here, and at the University of Edinburgh here.

Mayssa Rekhis is a physician, trained at the University of Tunis el-Manar, and a medical anthropologist, holding a PhD from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences EHESS - Paris. She holds more than a decade of experience working in SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa), East Africa, and Europe, both as a researcher and as a practitioner/consultant in the non-profit sector. As a researcher, she explore humans' the intersection between health, social justice, and migration, with a focus on experiences with extreme violence, trauma, suffering, and exile. She has served as co-director of the Global Health Master Program at the University of Gothenburg (inter-faculty program), and lectures on areas related to migration and health, and research methodologies, within a public and global health context. 

Signe Askersjö is a postdoctoral researcher within Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society at the Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the School of Global Studies at the same university. Her research examines how solidarity, boundary‑making, and migration shape everyday life in Sweden. She investigates how ideas of difference and similarity are produced and challenged in public discourse, politics, and ordinary encounters, and explores how borders and practices of integration are enacted in daily interactions. Across her work, she has focused on how people form solidarities, relationships, and understandings of one another, and on the alternative narratives that emerge when the complexity of everyday life is taken seriously. She teaches on the areas of migration, identity, and power relations, as well as anthropological methods and broader migration-related questions. Reach more about Signe on her institutional page here.

Zena Yared is a doctoral researcher within Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society at the Institute of Medicine at the University of Gothenburg. She is a physician trained at Damascus University, and holds a Masters in Sexual, Reproductive, and Perinatal Health from Dalarna University. She holds clinical experience in psychiatry in both hospital and NGO settings in Syria, where she has engaged with a wide variety of communities. Yared's current research interests include physicians’ agency in relation to politics and migration policy, as well as SRHR in relation to migration and marginalisation. She also teaches postgraduate students on migration within a public health context. Read more about Zena on her institutional page here. 

Lisen Dellenborg holds a PhD in social anthropology and is an Associate Professor in Health Care Sciences. She is senior lecturer at the School of Global Studies, and affiliated researcher at Border in Health, Medicine, and Society at the University of Gothenburg. Dellenborg has extensive experience of conducting qualitative research within healthcare contexts in Sweden on sexual and reproductive health, interprofessional teams, transcultural healthcare encounters, and palliative care. She has worked as consultant for the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) on questions concerning gender, health, and human rights, and is specialised in action research in healthcare. In her teaching, Dellenborg has taught on transcultural care and communication, person-centred care, human rights, and qualitative research methods. Read more about Lisen on her institutional page.

Karin Åberg is a lecture in international law at the Department of Law. She is also affiliated researcher at Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society and holds a Doctor of Laws (LLD) focusing on transnational migration law. Her work examines how legal practice is shaped through the interaction between EU law, international law, human rights law, and domestic legal systems. She has published on issues such as credibility assessments in LGB asylum claims, the categorisation of vulnerability at EU borders, and the political rights of irregular migrants. She also leads a research project on evidentiary challenges in family reunification cases involving same-sex couples, and teaches advanced level courses in legal theory and migration law. Read more about Karin on her institutional page here.

Andrea Spehar is an Associate Professor in Political Science and the Director of the Centre for European Research at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Spehar's research interests encompass the fields of migration and migrant integration, with a particular focus on their interrelationship with broader policy and administrative contexts. She has published broadly and holds various board and committee positions, including that of coordinator for a ten-year Swedish research programme within migration and integration, and co-director for the Swedish Research Council's Graduate Programme/Research School for Migration and Integration. Read more about Andrea on her institutional page.

Lena Gross is a senior researcher at the High North Department of NIKU, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, and affiliated researcher at Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society at the University of Gothenburg. They hold a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo and have worked as a postdoc and associate professor at the Centre for Sámi Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Gross’ primary research interests are traditional/Indigenous knowledges and knowledge hierarchies, relations to land(scapes), minority-majority relations, gender, inequalities and health, resource extraction, and decolonial and experimental methodologies. They work theoretically and methodologically at an intersection between Indigenous, queer, and gender studies and social anthropology. Read more about Lena on their institutional page.

Céline van Veen is an Associate Researcher at Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society at the University of Gothenburg. She is also a medical student currently completing her final semester at Sahlgrenska Academy's medical school. 

Multiple research associates, assistants, interns, and postgraduate students have engaged in the project in various ways. These include: 

• Agnes Johansson (sociology)
• Céline van Veen (medicine)
• Morhaf Mohamed (medicine och public health)
• Olivia Vuille (public health)
• Andreas Björklund (social anthropology)
• Destiny Noble (medical law and ethics) 
• Emma Lundberg (religious studies and healthcares sciences)
• Anna Wikner (global health)
• Josefina Lidman (global health)

This list is in chronological order and is updated continuously. 

The expert panel consists of physicians, medical students, representatives from medical humanitarianism, and representatives from professional unions and organisations. This panel meets twice annually and assists in research design and ongoing analysis, as well as the development of fictive cases used in our interviews, among other things.