VCML Snapshots
The VCML-Snapshots video series features brief interviews with our workshop guests, offering insights into their work, research, and key themes from our discussions. These short conversations capture key takeaways and reflections, giving viewers a window into the topics explored while highlighting pressing questions in the field. By sharing these snapshots, we aim to extend the conversation from our workshops beyond the moment, fostering broader dialogue and engagement.
Our Youtube-channel: www.youtube.com/@ViennaCentreforMigrationandLaw
SNAPSHOT Prof. Marco Borraccetti
Marco Borraccetti is Associate Professor of EU Law at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna (October 2019 – to date). He is Rector’s Delegate for Refugees. He is Co-director of the European Regional Master Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe (GC/SEE ERMA), University of Bologna and University of Sarajevo.
He is also representing the University of Bologna at the Global Campus of Human Rights, where he is Member of the Global Campus Council. He is member of the FRONTEX Consultative Forum, representing the Global Campus of Human Rights.
His main research interests are migration, borders management and trafficking in human beings from an EU law perspective.
Dana Schmalz is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Her work focuses on legal theory, migration law and human rights. Dana holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Frankfurt and an LL.M. in Comparative Legal Thought from Cardozo Law School, New York. Her first book “Refugees, Democracy and the Law. Political Rights at the Margins of the State” was published in 2020 (Routledge). Her second book on how the population growth discourse shaped law and politics (“Das Bevölkerungsargument”) was published in 2025 (Suhrkamp).
Sarah Tas is an Assistant Professor of European Administrative Law at Maastricht University. She completed her PhD on the supervision of Europol at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research is at the intersection of European administrative law, migration and criminal law, and data protection. Sarah is also a Senior Editor for the European Journal Legal Studies, and Co-Head of the Section of Digital State in Digi-Con. She is the author of various academic publications in the field, and has supported the European Parliament through the drafting of a targeted substitute impact assessment.
Lilian is Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in European Migration Law and Governance at the Law Faculty of Maastricht University and the Maastricht Centre for European Law. Her research lies at the intersection of EU Law, Public International Law, and public policy/administration with a focus on human rights, asylum, migration, and governance theories.
Lilian is currently (2025-2029) PI of the SoftEn (Soft Enforcement of EU Migration Law) project supported by a European Research Council Starting Grant, as well as WP leader in the ongoing (2023-2026) collective Horizon Europe ENSURED project on global governance and the EU's role in defending multilateralism. Previously, Lilian received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission and VENI and Hestia grants by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Lilian is also the joint Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law (OUP) and an Editorial Board member of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law (Sage). She is Deputy Coordinator of the Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe, the ‘Odysseus Network’. In addition, she co-chairs with UNHCR the European Academic Refugee Interdisciplinary Network (EARIN), established in the framework of the UN Global Compact on Refugees.
Dr. Jill Alpes is the Principal Investigator of the REMOVED project (Removal Infrastructures for Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey), hosted by the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and the Institute for International Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. As a legal anthropologist of migration, Jill combines qualitative ethnographic (observations, in-depth interviews, life histories), legal (laws and judgments) and participatory approaches (future literacy labs). Author of a monograph published by Routledge entitled “Brokering High-Risk Migration and Illegality: Abroad at any cost,” Jill’s main research sites are in Cameroon and Lebanon, with additional fieldwork sites in Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Mali, DRC) and Europe (France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Turkey). As part of the ERC project DISSECT (2021-2024), Jill studied the production of evidence for pushback cases at the European Court of Human Rights. As part of this research project, she published:
Alpes, M.J., Baranowska, G., (2024), “The politics of legal facts: The erasure of pushback evidence from the European Court of Human Rights”, Law and Social Inquiry.
Baranowska, G., and Alpes, M.J., (2024),“Official recognition of unofficial practices in M.A. and Z.R. v Cyprus: Examining the politics of legal facts for pushback cases at the ECtHR,” RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration.
J. Alpes and G. Baranowska. (2024) What’s beneath the iceberg in M.A. and Z.R. v Cyprus? The erasure of pushback evidence at borders, Border Criminology Blog.
SNAPSHOT Dr. Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche
Professor of law at the International, European and Comparative Law Centre of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and member of the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is also an associate member of the Centre for Research and Studies on Fundamental Rights at University Paris Nanterre, the Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Global Migration Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the Border Criminology group at Oxford University School of Law, and the Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration at Queen Mary University of London. Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche carries out researches that focus on evaluating the legitimacy of the political systems of the European Union and its Member States. In particular, she studies the effectiveness of the fundamental rights protection, notably examining the situations of exceptions and considering the conditions of margins. Thus, the serious crises which allow the concentration of powers and the restriction of rights, as well as the legal confinement which can conduce to power abuses and rights infringements are its main area of research. She concentrates her analysis on the EU immigration and asylum norms and their compatibility with international and European instruments of human rights protection. As junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France from 2012 to 2017, she led a research project on “The finis and the limes – Thoughts on the constitutional identity of the EU through the prism of migration and asylum law”. The MOEBIUS research project she currently conduces as Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France deals with “Sovereignty ordering migrations inside European borders. Uses v. Ethics”. She is member of the scientific committee of the Agency of the EU for Fundamental Rights. All her activities can be followed on her personal webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/marielaurebasiliengainche/home.
Florian F. Hoffmann is a Professor of Law at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil, a co-speaker of the UNHCR Cátedra Sérgio Vieira de Mello in Refugee Studies at PUC-Rio and an associate researcher at the Human Rights Center of the Law Department (Núcleo de Direitos Humanos). In this video he speaks about his current research on the concept of legal infrastructures and infrastructuring processes as a central analytical framework for understanding the complex dynamics of migration and border regulation in South America.