Gerasimos Tsourapas is 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of International Relations in the School of Government at the University of Birmingham. His research examines how states use cross-border mobility as an instrument of international power, with a particular focus on coercion, cooperation, and legitimation in world politics. Drawing on comparative research across the Middle East and the broader Global South, his work develops conceptual frameworks that contribute to wider debates on international power, migration, and strategic statecraft.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies (Oxford University Press), a leading journal in the field. He previously served as Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), and as Treasurer of the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He also served as an elected Trustee of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), a British Academy research institute, where he was Acting Honorary Treasurer and a member of the Research Sub-Committee.

Tsourapas currently leads a project on migration diplomacy, originally awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant and now funded in the UK through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and co-directs multi-year research initiatives on transnational authoritarianism, refugee return politics, and the securitisation of migration, supported by the European Research Council, Horizon Europe, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. His recent work has been published in journals including International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, International Migration Review, and the European Journal of International Relations. He is the author of The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press) and Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa (Manchester University Press), and his research has been recognised with awards from the ISA, APSA, and the Middle East Studies Association.

Tsourapas was previously Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, where he now holds an Honorary Research Fellowship. He serves as a Senior Fellow at the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at Tufts University, and has held visiting positions at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University; the London School of Economics and Political Science; Koç University; the American University in Cairo; and as an Academic Visitor at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

Born in Greece, Tsourapas holds a PhD in Politics and an MSc in Middle Eastern Politics from SOAS, University of London. He also earned an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Economics and Political Science from Yale University.

In addition to academic publications, he regularly engages with international media and policy audiences. His research has been cited in The Economist, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and he has provided expert advice to the OSCE, the OECD, and the International Organization for Migration.

Across all of his work, Tsourapas seeks to integrate rigorous comparative research with a commitment to public engagement and teaching excellence. He has designed and delivered training for the United Nations University, led workshops with practitioners and policymakers, and supervised doctoral students working on migration, authoritarianism, and international cooperation.

Gerasimos Tsourapas’s research explores the intersections of migration, international relations, and global governance, with a particular focus on the Middle East and the Global South. His work examines how cross-border mobility functions as a tool of statecraft, and how governments, especially in authoritarian and postcolonial contexts, strategically manage migration for diplomatic, economic, and symbolic purposes.

He has developed influential frameworks for the study of migration diplomacy, refugee rentierism, and migration power, advancing theoretical accounts of the interplay between foreign policy, displacement, and international hierarchies. His work sits at the intersection of international relations and migration studies, combining conceptual development with comparative research across diverse political contexts. His research has been published in leading journals including International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and International Migration Review.

Current Research Projects

Migration Diplomacy in International Politics (MIGDIPLO), 2022–27
Principal Investigator
This project examines how states use cross-border mobility as a strategic instrument in international relations. It develops migration diplomacy as a framework for understanding how states use cross-border mobility in international politics. The project was originally awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant and is now funded in the United Kingdom through UK Research and Innovation.

ERC Consolidator Grant: Disappearing Act – Reconstructing the Crime of Disappearances in Times of Violence (2023–28)
External Senior Collaborator
This project explores how enforced disappearance is constructed, recognised, and contested across different authoritarian and post-conflict settings, with attention to transnational linkages and state accountability.

Carnegie Corporation Project: Securitisation Without Security (2024–27)
Co-Principal Investigator
This project traces how global narratives of migration securitisation shape international cooperation, institutional design, and power asymmetries in world politics.

Tsourapas’s past research has been supported by the British Academy, the Council for British Research in the Levant, the Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Libyan Studies, the International Studies Association, the Independent Research Social Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account, and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), among others.

Thematic Research Areas

Migration Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
Tsourapas is the author of Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa: Power, Mobility, and the State (Manchester University Press, 2021), which examines how states across the MENA region leverage migration to achieve foreign policy objectives. His research on migration interdependence received the 2017 Martin O. Heisler Award from the International Studies Association and has informed work by the European Commission and the OECD.

Transnational Repression and State Projection
He has extensively published on the international dimensions of authoritarian rule, including diaspora repression, cross-border surveillance, and coercion by proxy. He leads and co-leads projects on authoritarianism and enforced disappearance and has developed conceptual tools for understanding authoritarianism beyond the nation-state. His research has informed work by Freedom House, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UK Parliament, and Human Rights Watch.

Postcolonial and South–South Migration Regimes
In collaboration with Kamal Sadiq (UC Irvine), Tsourapas developed the concept of a transnational social contract to understand how states govern South–South migration corridors. He has also written on migration governance in postcolonial states, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. His first book, The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was awarded the 2020 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award by the International Studies Association.

Forced Displacement and Refugee Rentierism
Tsourapas developed the model of the refugee rentier state to explain how states commodify displaced populations for political and economic gain. Based on fieldwork in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, this research has shaped comparative debates on refugee-hosting strategies and was recognised with the 2020 VIADUCT Research Award (EU Erasmus+).