Plenary speakers
Sheldon Zhang
Sheldon X. Zhang, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at University of Massachusetts Lowell, has been active in research on transnational human smuggling and trafficking activities for more than two decades. He has extensive expertise in prevalence estimation, large scale survey design and implementation, as well as measurement development. He has also gained much national and international prominence in leading/co-leading large-scale survey projects to estimate the prevalence of human trafficking/forced labor in the U.S. and overseas, including Costa Rica, Ghana, India, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, Tanzania, and Vietnam. His projects have been funded by government agencies and private foundations in the U.S. and abroad. He has written and lectured extensively on trafficking and smuggling issues. He has been twice invited to the White House to participate in national gatherings of policy-makers/advocacy groups/researchers on combatting human trafficking, and led in planning and participation in a forum by the National Academy of Sciences on latest methodologies for estimating the prevalence of modern slavery. He has authored/co-authored 14 books and edited volumes, and more than 120 scholarly journal articles, book chapters and technical reports.
Halleh Ghorashi
Halleh Ghorashi is a Full Professor of Diversity and Integration in the Department of Sociology at the VU (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For the past 25 years, she has done research on the struggles of refugees on their path of inclusion. In 2010, she was appointed as a member of KHMW (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen). In 2018, she received the prestigious VICI grant on Engaged Scholarship and Narratives of Change from NWO. In the same year, she was appointed as a Crown Member of the SER (Dutch Social Economic Council) and in 2020 as a member of KNAW (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). In 2021, she received Amsterdam Impact Award for her research on refugees and diversity. Since 2022, she has been a member of the state committee against discrimination and racism.
Tesseltje de Lange
Tesseltje de Lange is Professor of European Migration Law and Director at Centre for Migration Law (CMR) at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She publishes widely on EU and Dutch labour migration law and practices, migrant inclusion and work. She regularly speaks and chairs at conferences. She is sought after to advice Dutch and EU institutions as well as private entities on migration policies, procedures and legislative choices, for instance in 2022 to the EP on The EU Legal Migration Package. Central to her research are complex regulatory infrastructures, mixing migration with trade, human rights, social rights and more. However, as former practicing immigration lawyer and honorary district court judge her interest in the interaction between law and practice at the national level is relentless.
Anne Kaun
Anne Kaun is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University Sweden. She publishes widely on questions of social justice in relation to digital technologies including algorithmic decision-making systems in the public sector across domains. She has been expert advisor on questions of inequality and artificial intelligence for European think tanks, the Swedish government as well as several Swedish public agencies. In her work, she promotes comparative research across welfare domains and across national welfare regimes to better understand the role of technology for human flourishing. Kaun has published Crisis and Critique: A History of Media Participation in Times of Crisis (Zed Books, 2016), and her latest book, Prison Media Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology, will be published by MIT Press in May 2023.