Zvezda Vankova is a postdoctoral fellow at the Law faculty of Lund University in Sweden where she currently works on her new research project ‘Refugees as Migrant Workers. Labour Migration as Alternative for Refugee Protection in the EU Context?’ (2019-2021) supported by a Rubicon grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Dr Vankova holds a PhD in Law from the Maastricht University. She wrote her PhD dissertation “Circular migration from the Eastern neighbourhood to the EU – the rights of migrant workers in Bulgaria and Poland” as part of the Marie Curie’s TRANSMIC project. Prior to joining the Law faculty of Lund University, Dr Vankova worked at the Department of European and International Law and the Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility of Maastricht University (ITEM).
Dr Vankova was the Central Research Coordinator of the 2015 edition of the Migrant Integration Policy Index and worked as a Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Group in Brussels. As a Researcher and Program Coordinator at the Law Programme of the Open Society Institute Sofia (2005-2013), Zvezda Vankova was an active participant in the development of Bulgarian immigration and integration policy through policy and legal analyses, advocacy work and capacity-building activities. Zvezda was selected by UNHCR Bulgaria to monitor the National Program for Integration of Refugees in Bulgaria as an independent expert in the period 2012-2014 and served as the Country Co-coordinator for the European Web Site on Integration for Bulgaria. She also conducted an independent monitoring into immigration detention facilities in Bulgaria. At the end of 2012, she co-founded the association Multi Kulti Collective, which aims to support the integration of foreigners into Bulgarian society.
Dr Vankova's research interests are in the field of migration law and policy, human rights law and legal empirical research.
