Currently I am a Part Time Assistant Professor at the Migration Policy Centre (before Research Fellow). This centre is part of the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute based in Florence, Italy. The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSC) focuses on inter-disciplinary, comparative and policy research on the major issues affecting European societies. The Migration Policy Centre (MPC) conducts advanced research on the governance of international migration, asylum and mobility. It aims to provide new ideas, rigorous evidence and critical thinking to inform major European and global policy debates. The MPC has made me the migration scholar I am today: passionate and engaged in leading migration debates.
Since July 2022 I also work as a Policy Officer at the City of Vienna, in the Department for Integration and Diversity. The policy measures of the City of Vienna have been widely praised as a role model across Europe when it comes to inclusionary practices of urban immigrant integration.
Until the summer of 2022 I was also based at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna (Austria), where I work as a lecturer. The Department of Political Science is active in all major fields of political science. The departmental research focus is on the transformation of governance, statehood and democracy in different policy areas, geographical regions and political spaces. The department is the largest political science teaching institution in Austria with a highly diverse student body.
From 2014-2015 I was a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at University of Sheffield (UK), one one of the top-ranked departments for the study of politics worldwide. The Department has been ranked in the top three of every one of the UK’s national research assessments since 2001. My time in Sheffield has turned me into a woke observer of British politics, and has provided me with invaluable teaching and research experience in a UK Russell Group University.
From 2013-2014 I held a Fellowship (grant based) at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS, Johns Hopkins University) in Washington D.C. (U.S.A), a world leading institution for international relations. Having worked and lived in the United States my work on the EU benefits from a comparative, transatlantic understanding of governance dynamics in the Global North.
I hold a Ph.D. (2013) in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute. The European University Institute (EUI) is an international centre for doctorate and post-doctorate studies and research, which hosts scholars from over 60 countries. The EUI has taught me how to do rigorous research, to connect to leading international debates, and enabled me to exchange with academics and peers from all over the globe.
During my Ph.D. studies I held a visiting position at the School of Social Policy Social Work and Social Justice at the University College Dublin (Ireland), which provided me a deep knowledge about socio-political dynamics in Ireland, and allowed me to write a Ph.D. thesis from a comparative perspective, looking at Austria and Ireland.
Prior to that I was a visiting researcher at the CNRS (Paris, France), which in the framework of a research project on conflicts and regulations about Muslim female veiling, enabled me to connect to French-speaking academic debates on multiculturalism, religion and politics.
During my undergraduate studies at the University of Vienna (major: politics, minor: history), I went one semester to study at the ELTE university in Budapest, where I could deepen my knowledge of Hungarian politics and history, and -as all classes took place in Hungarian- I also had the opportunity to work on my Hungarian, which back in the day I mastered to speak fluently.
Today I regularly speak, write in, and listen to English and German (native). I also speak and understand Italian, and French, and understand Hungarian.
I am happy about every opportunity to learn and grow. I did academic trainings in documentary filmmaking (University College London, 2015), social network analysis (University of Manchester, 2014), and I have a academic certificate in tourism management (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, 2002).
Leila Hadj Abdou 