Vassilis S. Tsianos

Vassilis S. Tsianos is Professor of Sociological Foundations of Childhood Education at Kiel University of Applied Sciences' Department of Social Work and Health since October 2017, specializing in migration, border regimes, and social inequality. Previously, he held professorships at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (2017) and served as Acting Professor for Social Work at Kiel (2015-2017). He chairs the Council for Migration and serves on Schleswig-Holstein's Integration Advisory Board.

• PhD in Social Sciences, University of Hamburg (2007)
• Research Scholarship, German Federal Cultural Foundation (2002-2005)

His research examines migration through intersectional lenses, analyzing border biometrics, racialized politics, and digital networks in European contexts. He investigates how embodied migration experiences intersect with surveillance technologies, while exploring mobile commons as sites of resistance against border regimes. Current work focuses on pandemic impacts on refugee reception and longue durée racism in German society.

Recent publications reveal evolving focus from border regime analysis (2010-2016) toward embodied migration politics (2018-2022), with increasing attention to biometric surveillance, racialized reception systems, and pandemic-era solidarity movements. His work bridges migration theory, critical race studies, and digital sociology through transnational empirical research.

• Hellenic Observatory award for Mobile Citizenship research (2020)
• German Federal Cultural Foundation Research Scholarship (2002-2005)

He secured €500,000+ in third-party funding including Erasmus+ Continugee (2020), LSE/University of Nicosia Mobile Citizenship project (2020), and Federal Anti-Racism Initiative evaluation (2019). As research coordinator for EU Mig@net (2010-2013) and YouMap (2007-2009), he directed transnational studies on digital migration networks and youth cartographies.

He co-founded the ConTrust research initiative on political coexistence under uncertainty and participates in the DFG Network on Antidiscrimination Data. His Centre for Study of Social and Humanitarian Crises fellowship (University of West Attica) supports comparative crisis research across Mediterranean migration contexts.