Position 
Associate Research Fellow
Phone 
32 50 47 13 05
Nationality 
Belgium
At UNU-CRIS 
02/07/2018
Research Interests 

Human Mobility
Climate Change
Climate Migration
Regional Integration

Education 

MA, Economics of Globalisation and European Integration (EGEI), Erasmus Mundus Joint Master
MSc., Business Administration (Strategic management), Ghent University
BA, Business Management, Artevelde University College Ghent

Biographical Statement 

Els Bekaert is an Associate Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS since 1 December 2022. Before that she was a PhD Fellow with UNU-CRIS label, where she focused her research on mobility as the human face of climate change. More specifically she analysed the heterogeneity in climate migration and policy frameworks. She was under  the supervision of Professor Dr Ilse Ruyssen (Ghent University).

Els holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s degree in Economics of Globalisation and European Integration (EGEI). This degree granted her with the opportunity to study combined at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), Université Lille1 in Lille (France) and the University of Economics (VSE) in Prague (Czech Republic). In her dissertation, she aimed to improve the understanding on the way climate change influences migration behaviour within and out of Asia. She jointly combined writing her thesis with a summer internship at UNU-CRIS. At Ghent University, Els completed a MSc in Business Administration, for which she completed a three months strategic management internship in Shanghai (China). In this dissertation, she focused on defining the determinants of migration in Asia. At the Artevelde University College in Ghent, she studied Business Administration, for which she conducted an Erasmus internship in London (United Kingdom).