Dr Zvezda Vankova is Multi Kulti Collective’s founder and first chairperson (until March 2016). She has been a member of the management board ever since. Dr Vankova holds a PhD in Law from the Maastricht University. She wrote her PhD dissertation on “Circular migration from the Eastern neighbourhood to the EU – the rights of migrant workers in Bulgaria and Poland”.
At present, Dr Zvezda Vankova has been awarded a two-year Rubicon grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to conduct research at the Law faculty of Lund University (2019-2021). The topic she is currently working on is “Refugees as Migrant Workers. Labour Migration as Alternative for Refugee Protection in the EU Context?”.
Prior to joining the Law faculty of Lund University, Dr Vankova worked at the Department of European and International Law & Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility of Maastricht University. 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 Coordinator for the European Web Site on Integration (EWSI) for Bulgaria. She also conducted an independent monitoring report into immigration detention facilities in Bulgaria.
