Biography
Denis Kierans is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) and a visiting academic at the Spanish National Research Council's Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography in Madrid.
At COMPAS, his work spans two initiatives, The Migration Observatory and The Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity. This includes the facilitation of Inclusive Cities, a UK-wide network of 12 cities working on integration, regular analysis and communication of migration and integration statistics, and his role as PI of Welcoming Futures.
He is a part of the 17-partner consortium leading the Measuring Irregular Migration and Related Policies (MIrreM) project, a follow-up to the seminal Clandestino project (2009). In it, he coordinates the collection, assessment and dissemination of estimates of the irregular migrant population across Europe and North America. He is the lead author of the MIrreM Public Database on Irregular Migration Stock Estimates and the forthcoming report, The Irregular Migration Population of Europe.
Denis presents his academic findings in a variety of fora, both for academics and the general public, and contributes to such initiatives as the International Migration Research Network (IMISCOE). He is currently preparing materials to instruct DPhil candidates on methods of analysis and visualisation of migration and integration data for IMISCOE's 2025 Summer School. Please be in touch if this is of interest to you.
Previously, he was a Data and Research Officer at IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre in Berlin. In this role, he co-authored the Guidelines for the Harmonization of Migration Data Management in the ECOWAS Region, which was disseminated across West Africa and is helping to lay the groundwork for improved production and sharing of migration data in the region and beyond.
Denis holds a Master's degree from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he focused on the movements of vulnerable groups within and between the EU and Russia.
