Gerasimos Tsourapas

Biography

Dr. Tsourapas joined POLSIS in 2016. His research interests include the determinants of authoritarian durability, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa context; emigration and diaspora politics, particularly in the Global South; and the interplay between population mobility and international relations, particularly with regard to forced migration and refugee politics. Prior to the University of Birmingham, Dr. Tsourapas was a Senior Teaching Fellow in International Relations at SOAS, University of London (2015-16), where he was awarded the Annual Director’s Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching and the promotion of learning within the School. During the 2013-14 academic year he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies of the American University of Cairo, and a Guest Researcher at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Leiden University in Cairo. His research has been funded by a three-year SOAS Research Studentship, an American University of Cairo Visiting Graduate Scholar Fellowship, and a number of smaller grants. He has pursued training in qualitative and quantitative methodologies at the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (2013) and the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (2015), respectively. He has also undertaken Arabic language training (Modern Standard Arabic & Egyptian Colloquial Arabic) in Cairo, London, as well as at the Middlebury College Arabic School as a Kathryn W. Davis Fellow for Peace. Dr. Tsourapas attended Yale University (B.A., 2006, Political Science and Economics) on a four-year Charles F. Hunt scholarship, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (M.Sc., 2007, International Political Economy) on an Achillopoulos Foundation fellowship. He was also employed as a researcher for the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009-11), and as a European Union elections observer, most recently at the Tunisian Constituent Assembly elections. During the latter he was deployed to Tunis and Brussels, where he participated in the European Union’s first attempt at monitoring out-of-country voting.

Research Interest

Gerasimos Tsourapas is currently the Principal Investigator for the following two research projects: Migration Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean - Inter-State Politics of Population Mobility in the Middle East (April 2017 - March 2018) Funded by a Council for the British Research in the Levant pilot grant, this yearlong project investigates how migratory flows across national borders have affected states' diplomatic interaction. It focuses on the politics of Jordan's management of cross-border population mobility in its international relations on three levels: as a sending state (regarding emigrants in the Arab oil-producing states); as a transit state (regulating Egyptian migrants' transit to the Gulf); and as a host state (regarding its Palestinian population). The Politics of Forced Migration in the Mediterranean: Interstate Bargaining and Issue-Linkage in Greece and Jordan (April 2017 - Sept 2018) Funded by a British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant, this 18-month long project aims to understand how post-2011 forced displacement has affected the behavior of two key states in the region towards international actors. Greece and Jordan, both heavily affected by an influx of refugee populations, have employed these population flows in diplomatic relations. I hypothesise that forced migration has independently influenced and shaped the two states' diplomatic behaviours, enabling novel interstate bargaining strategies and issue-linkage strategies with international actors. The comparative case-study will focus on the two states' post-2011 negotiations with the European Union. It will allow for an in-depth analysis of how, and under which conditions, forced migration affects the international relations of host states, while also informing policy on states’ strategies in managing refugee inflows