Areas of Expertise

• Migration, flight, and asylum
• Migration cooperation
• Return
• Integration at universities

Short Bio

Dr. Isabelle Schäfer is a research fellow in DGAP’s Center for Migration, where she conducts research on the foreign and development policy effects of migration cooperation.

Before joining DGAP, Schäfer was a research associate at Germany’s Expert Council on Integration and Migration. She contributed to its Annual Report 2024, mainly on asylum and return policy. She was also a research associate for the University of Exeter, where she worked on a research project on refugees in universities in the UK. Previously, she had worked in communications at the World Bank in Latin America for several years and lived in Mexico City.

Schäfer completed her PhD in social and policy sciences at the University of Bath in England on the topic of refugee integration and the role of universities. Prior to this, she completed her master’s degree in comparative and international education at the University of Oxford. Schäfer also holds two master’s degrees in journalism, one from Columbia University in New York City and the other from Sciences Po Paris.
 

Languages

German, French, English, Spanish

[Last updated: November 2024]