Irene Ponzo is Deputy Director of FIERI (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione - International and European Forum for Migration Research).

She holds a PhD in Comparative Social Research from the University of Turin (Italy).Since its foundation in 2004 she has been an active member of the European IMISCOE Research Network on “International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe”. In 2013 she was a Visiting Scholar at COMPAS of the University of Oxford.

She has participated in several joint research projects. In the last few years she was project manager of the EIF-funded project “Concordia Discors. Understanding Conflict and Integration Outcomes of Inter-group Interactions and Integration Policies in Selected Neighbourhoods in Five European Cities” (2010-2012) and FIERI’s principal researcher in the EIF-funded EU-MIA project (“European Migrant Integration Academy. An integrated research and cooperative learning project to reinforce integration capacities in European cities”, 2012-2014). She is currently involved in Horizon20202 project “MEDRESET. A comprehensive, integrated, and bottom-up approach to reset our understanding of the Mediterranean space, remap the region, and reconstruct inclusive, responsive, and flexible EU policies in it” led by the Istituto Affari Internazionali.

Her main research interests concern immigrant integration processes and integration policies. In recent years, she has worked extensively on policy-making processes on migration and integration, transformations of welfare policies related to migration and housing policies.