Melissa Siegel
Melissa Siegel is an American academic specialising in migration. She is professor of migration studies at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT where she has also been head of the migration and development research section since 2010.
Biography
Melissa Siegel received a BSc in economics from the College of Charleston and graduated from the Honors College in 2003. In 2004, she received an MSc in Law and Economics from Utrecht University, as well as an MA in Policy and Organization in 2005. She obtained a PhD from Maastricht University in 2010 in Social Protection Policy.Siegel is head of the Migration and Development research section of the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT, which implements research projects and teaching programmes for policy makers. She is also co-director of the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development at Maastricht University. Siegel currently holds the Chair of the UNU Migration Network and is a research associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford. She is also on the advisory board of the Migration Policy Center at the EUI and the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, and was formerly on the board of the Hague Process on Refugees and Migration. She has been a visiting research fellow at Harvard University, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and the University of Oxford.
Research
Siegel's main research areas include:- The effects of migration on children and elderly left behind
- The linkages between different forms of migration and multi-dimensional poverty
- The linkages between migration and development
- Remittance, effects, usage and channels
- Migration policy and practice
- Migration and corruption
- Migration and health