Elena Ponzoni connects in her work the fields of diversity and inclusion, philosophy of language and sociology of science. She has worked with research themes such as the role of migrant organizations in the Dutch welfare state, the inclusion of refugees in the labour market, how parenting support professionals engage with diversity, and the potential of social sciences to contribute to social change through forms of co-creation and participatory reflective research.
She is the coordinator of the Refugee Academy and launched this initiative together with Halleh Ghorashi. Next to designing and organizing meetings together with various partners, she coordinates various ongoing research projects, writes proposals for future research in co-creation with societal partners, supervises students and junior researchers and maintains contacts with the Refugee Academy network. Furthermore, she also contributes as post-doc researcher to the Engaged Scholarship and Narratives of Change research project.
‘My hope is that the processes of reflection, knowledge production and learning together that we initiate can lead to actual improvement of the lives of refugees in the Netherlands and empower committed people from different positions to actually contribute to more inclusive spaces in society.’
