GLMM Scientific Director

GLMM Scientific Director

Imco Brouwer is Managing Director of the Gulf Labour Markets, Migration, and Population (GLMM) programme, at the Gulf Research Center (GRC).

Usamah F. Alfarhan is an applied microeconomist who earned his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University in 2010. He served as an economic consultant for the USAID-funded Fiscal Reform Project in Jordan before rejoining Academia in 2012. Since then, he taught economics at the principles level, intermediate microeconomics, labor economics, mathematical economics, and economics of tourism mainly at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Usamah joined Haile College of Business at Northern Kentucky University in 2022. His research focus is fundamentally on applied queries in labor and tourism economics, citable in reputable outlets such as the International Journal of Manpower, Economic Modelling, the International Journal of Consumer Studies, Tourism Economics and Current Issues in Tourism, among others. He also serves as Senior Fellow at the Gulf Labour Markets, Migration and Population Programme.

Froilan T. Malit, Jr. is a PhD Politics candidate at the University of Glasgow and a visiting fellow at the American University in Dubai, specializing in the linkages between foreign policy, migration, and labor rights in the Asia-Gulf corridor.  For more than a decade, Malit has worked as a Middle East migration policy consultant for regional and international organizations, including the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, ILO, IOM, World Bank, and other global think tanks, academic, and migrant civil society institutions. He is also member of the ILO Regional Office for Arab States’ Migration Advisory Group, a GLMM senior associate researcher, and a managing director of Rights Corridor. He has published in numerous academic publications, including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Global Studies Quarterly, International Migration, Asia Pacific and Migration Journal (forthcoming), and among others, and co-edited with Dr. Rania Rafik Khalil a book, Recent Migrations and Refugees in the Middle East (Transnational Press London, 2019). He regularly provides migration policy opinions to international media outlets, including the New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, The Washington Post, South China Morning Post, Gulf News, and Gulf Today. He holds B.S Industrial and Labour Relations (with honors) from Cornell University, MSc Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, MSt International Relations (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge, and a migration certificate /training from the European University Institute and the University of the Philippines’s ASEAN graduate program.

Magdalena Karolak is Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University, UAE. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics, M.A. in Political Science, M.A. in Latin American Studies, and B.A. in French Language. Prior to working at ZU, Dr. Karolak held Assistant Professor positions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In 2014-15, she was an American Political Science Association MENA Fellow. Her research interests include transformations of societies in the MENA region and comparative linguistics. Dr. Karolak has published more than 50 journal articles and book chapters on the shifting gender relations, social media, culture and identity, and political system transformations in the MENA countries. She is the author of three scholarly monographs.

Dr. George Naufal is an associate research scientist at the Public Policy Research Institute (PPRI) at Texas A&M University, a visiting Scientist at the Center for Health Data Science and Analytics at Houston Methodist Research Institute, a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the Economic Research Forum (ERF). Previously he was the Technical Director at Timberlake Consultants. He was also an Assistant/Associate Professor of Economics at The American University of Sharjah (2007 to 2014) in the United Arab Emirates. George earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 2007 from Texas A&M University. His area of expertise is applied econometrics with applications to labor economics including criminal justice, education, migration, and public health. He has published extensively on migration and labor market issues in the Gulf region including a book titled “Expats and the labor force: The Story of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries”. Dr. Naufal’s work has been cited by regional such as Al Arabiyah, GulfNews, National News, and international media outlets such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Washington Post, and NPR.

Aashish Karn joined the Gulf Labour Markets, Migration, and Population (GLMM) program. He is a postgraduate student in the sociology department of Lancaster University, currently pursuing a Master of Arts (MA) in Social Research degree on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant. Aashish holds an undergraduate degree in International Politics from Georgetown University with a minor in Indian Ocean Studies and a certificate in Asian Studies. His academic interests are inclined towards exploring sociality among South Asian migrant populations living in the Arabian Gulf where he is currently researching the transport of social hierarchies and the formation of social networks within the Nepali migrant diaspora of Qatar.

Sharique Umar is a Ph.D. student in the Gulf Studies Program & Center at Qatar University, where he also works as a graduate assistant. He holds two master’s degrees: an MA in Islamic Ethics from Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and an MA in International and Area Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India. Sharique’s research interests include South-South migration, migrants’ identity, the intersection of religion and migration, and culture and society in the Gulf.
Before joining GLMM as a non-resident intern, Sharique worked on projects with various organizations such as Qatar Foundation, Stimson Center in Washington, and Schumacher Society in New Delhi. He has recently published a chapter in a book titled “Social Change in the Gulf Region: Multidisciplinary Perspectives,” among other publications.

Philippe Fargues is a French demographer. His most recent positions were Founding Director of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence) and Co-Founder and Co-Scientific Director of GLMM. He held senior positions at the National Institute for Demographic Studies in Paris and the American University in Cairo. He taught  at Sciences Po Paris, Harvard, and various universities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His research covers population studies, migration, and political demography. His recent publications include: Excluded Generations in Non-Inclusive Nations: The Demographic Roots of Political Unrest in the Arab World (Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle-East, 2021), Migration in West and North Africa and across the Mediterranean (Ed. with M. Rango, E. Borgnäs and I. Schöfberger, International Organization for Migration, 2020), Advancing Knowledge on International Migration: Data and Research Needs (International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 2018),  Migration to the Gulf. Policies in sending and receiving countries (with N. Shah, GRC-Cambridge, 2018).

Maysa Zahra holds a Master’s degree in the Theory & Practice of Human Rights from the University Of Essex (Human Rights Centre) in the United Kingdom. She previously studied International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dalal Moosa is a student at Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne / Paris School of Economics, currently finishing her Master’s degree with a focus on population and labor economics. She will begin her PhD work in September, 2014, as part of the European Doctorate in Economics Erasmus Mundus program (EDEEM). She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from New York University, USA, in 2009 with a double-major in Finance and Journalism. She worked for the following three years in Bahrain, at the Economic Development Board, where she researched issues relating to fiscal policy, employment, innovation and the development of the National Economic Strategy of Bahrain, authoring pieces published in the Bahrain Economic Quarterly and the Annual Report 2010. Her current research interests are in generational, labor and family economics.

Mohammad Javaid is a master’s student in Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Prior to joining the Graduate Institute, he completed an interdisciplinary master’s in Society and Culture at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. He holds a Bachelor’s in Arabic studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Hailing from Kashmir, Javaid’s research has been inspired by his personal experiences. It includes political conflict, humanitarian aid and anthropology of Islam. Javaid also works on the ‘Quiet Aid’ Project – funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Dr. Anis Ben Brik is an Associate Professor and founding director of the Program for Social Policy and Evaluation Research (PROSPER) at the College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. With a diverse background in advancing evidence-based decision-making and social policy, he has made significant contributions to the field. Previously, he served as the Director of the Family Policy Department at the Doha International Family Institute and held senior advisory roles with the UAE Government. Dr. Ben Brik has been a trusted advisor to multiple ministries and has served on national and regional Scientific Committees for Development Strategies.

Dr. Ben Brik’s primary research interests lie in the empirical analysis of welfare systems, family and child welfare, social protection, evaluation, and digital transformations. He has published extensively in international peer-reviewed journals and has authored several books on program evaluation, social protection, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public policy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Dr. Ben Brik has experience in applying experimental and non-experimental methods to evaluate policies and has provided valuable insights for government departments, particularly in the areas of family and child welfare, child protection, social security, labor economics, and public economics. He is a strong advocate for strengthening civil society engagement and collaborative partnerships at the United Nations, where he has served as the Middle East Regional Partner at the United Nations NGO Major Group.

In addition to his other accomplishments, Dr. Anis Ben Brik is currently leading several research projects, including “Reducing Populations’ Vulnerabilities to Mis-Disinformation Related to Scientific Content” in collaboration with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “Managing Social Transformation in Qatar: Risks, Trends and Future Trajectories,” the “Digital Transformation and Future of Jobs and Skills in the Middle East and North Africa,” and the “Risk Assessment of Communicable Diseases among Migrant Workers in Qatar” sponsored by the Ministry of Public Health. He is also leading “the COVID Family Life Study,” a global study being conducted in 72 countries and sponsored by the United Nations.