STEERING GROUP
The CMARN Steering Group provides overall leadership and coordination of core CMARN activities. Meet the members of the Steering Group below!
Dr Aondawase Targba
CO-CHAIR
Reader (Associate Professor) of
Demography
Department of Sociology
Federal University Gusau, Nigeria
Aondowase Targba is a Reader/Associate Professor of Demography in the Department of Sociology at the Federal University Gusau, Nigeria. He holds a PhD in Sociology (Demography) with additional training in disaster management research. His major research interests include climate-induced displacement, resilience and adaptation, and forced migration and disaster displacement. He served as a co-researcher of an NRF project as well as a consultant on projects supported by the Open Societies Foundation, the European Union, UK Aid, and UNICEF in Nigeria on civil-military relations, community engagement, social/political inclusion, and child protection, respectively. Dr Targba is a fellow of the 2024 Climate Mobility Africa Academy, Kenya, and he has served as a mentor of the 2025 Displaced Scholars Peer Mentoring Programme: Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW, Australia. He served as an expert reviewer for the 2025 IPCC special report on climate change and cities. He has been a member of the Steering Group for Climate Mobility Africa Research Network and is currently a co-chair of the network.
Email: aondowasetargba@fugusau.edu.ng
Twitter: @Aondowasetargba
Dr Thabo Ndlovu
CO-CHAIR
University of the Free State,
South Africa
Dr Thabo Ndlovu is a Research Fellow at the Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DiMTEC), University of the Free State in South Africa. He holds higher level qualifications in Disaster Management, Sustainable Agriculture and Business Management. Thabo has more than 23 years of national, regional and international experience in livelihoods, rural and urban resilience, agriculture & climate change adaptation. He is a balanced individual, with academic and field experience having worked extensively in humanitarian and development roles both on fulltime and consultancy basis in conflict and non-conflict settings such as Afghanistan, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. He is a former member of the Africa Science Technology Advisory Group on DRR under the African Union Commission and is currently the Co-Chair of the Climate Mobility Africa Research Network. He has extensive experience working with institutional donors such as EU, DFID, and UN agencies such as WFP and FAO, and is well acquainted with their expectations, rules and regulations.
Email: thabondlovu09@gmail.com
Dr Oluwatoyin Adejonwo
MEMBER
University of Lagos, Nigeria
Dr Adejonwo is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos and a Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. She holds a doctorate in International Environmental Law from the School of Law, University of Dundee. Her research interests and expertise span governance of the climate change process, the legal and regulatory frameworks governing the process, and the linkages with sustainable development, climate adaptation and mitigation. She has taught environmental law at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at universities in Scotland and South Africa. She serves on the Committee of Experts providing legal, advisory and technical support on climate change to the Department of Climate Change (DCC) of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria.
Email: oadejonwoosho@yahoo.com
Prof Ademola Jegede
MEMBER
University of Venda, South Africa
Professor Ademola Oluborode Jegede is a Professor of Law and an NRF-rated researcher in the School of Law, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa. He holds degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, University of Ibadan and the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He has been a research visitor to the Centre for International Environmental Law, USA and Human Rights Institute at Abo Akademi, Finland. His research principally focuses on the interface of climate change and biodiversity loss with the human rights of vulnerable populations.
Email: ademola.jegede@univen.ac.za
Twitter: @jegedeademola
Dr Nicodemus Nyandiko
MEMBER
Masinde Muliro University of
Science & Technology, Kenya
Dr Nicodemus Nyandiko is a Senior Lecturer/Researcher in the Department of Disaster Management and Sustainable Development of Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST), Kenya. He holds a PhD in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development and is a member of the Africa Science and Technology Advisory Group for Disaster Risk Reduction. His research interests spanning over a 20-year period focus on food security, climate change and disaster risk reduction.
Email: nnyandiko@mmust.ac.ke
Dr Benjamin Schraven
MEMBER
German institute for Development
and Sustainability, Germany
Dr Benjamin Schraven is a Consultant and an Senior Associate Fellow of the German Institute for Development and Sustainability (IDOS). He holds a PhD in development studies from the University of Bonn (Germany). His research and consultancy work focuses mainly on human mobility in the context of climate change with a special focus on the African continent. Dr Schraven has been conducting commissioned studies and consultancy work on the climate-mobility-nexus for the European Union, the World Bank, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and several other agencies. He has been active as a Guest Lecturer at the University of Ghana several times.
Email: benj.schraven@gmail.com
Dr Caroline Zickgraf
MEMBER
Hugo Observatory, University of
Liège
Dr Caroline Zickgraf is the Deputy Director of the Hugo Observatory: Environment, Migration, Politics in the Department of Geography at the University of Liège. Her main areas of research are the migratory impacts of climate change on coastal populations, transnationalism, migration and sustainability, and (im)mobility, primarily in West Africa. Dr Zickgraf has consulted for the World Bank, the Nansen Initiative, the Green European Foundation (GEF), the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), UN Environment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on the links between climate change and migration.
Email: caroline.zickgraf@uliege.be
Dr Tamara Wood
MEMBER
Kaldor Centre for International
Refugee Law, UNSW
Dr Wood is a Senior Research Fellow at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney, and a Postdoctoral Researcher (external) at the Hertie School, Berlin. Her research interests are in international and regional refugee law, disaster and climate-related mobility, free movement of persons agreements and complementary pathways to protection. She has published widely on these topics and acted as a consultant and advisor to the Platform on Disaster Displacement, Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement, International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Institute for Security Studies Africa and the World Bank. Dr Wood is the former founding Co-Chair of CMARN.
Email: tamara.wood@unsw.edu.au
Twitter: @tamarajanewood
Dr Cheikh Tidiane Wade
MEMBER
Université Assane Seck, Senegal
Dr Cheikh Tidiane Wade is a Research Professor at Université Assane Seck in Ziguinchor, Senegal. His work focuses on climate change, territorial development and migration. Dr Wade is Team Leader of a research project on migration, climate change, mobility, adaptation and resilience in West Africa and Asia. Over the course of his career, Dr Wade has participated in numerous international scientific symposia and developed a wealth of expertise in issues of climate change adaptation, particularly community resilience strategies and responses. He has carried out several missions on migration issues for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Swiss International Cooperation Service, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Christina Daszkiewicz
OBSERVER
International Organization for
Migration (IOM)
Christina Daszkiewicz is a Project Officer with the Migration, Environment Climate Change and Risk Reduction (MECR) Division of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). She previously worked worked at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Oxford as a Knowledge Manager of weADAPT, and as as an intern with the Platform on Disaster Displacement.
Email: cdaszkiewicz@iom.int
Rose Kobusinge
MEMBER
Post Graduate Researcher,
Coventry University
Centre for Peace and Security
Climate Mobility Policy Advocate
Rose Kobusinge is a climate mobility, sustainability, and development practitioner, and a postgraduate researcher at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University. Her work focuses on the intersections of climate change, migration, displacement, sustainable energy access, and inclusive development in Africa.
She is passionate about advancing youth and women's participation in climate mobility policy, advocacy, research, and decision-making. Over the years, she has worked with communities, civil society organisations, development partners, policymakers, and youth networks to promote climate justice, community resilience, and locally led solutions to climate and development challenges.
Her interests span climate mobility, migration governance, sustainability, humanitarian action, sustainable energy access, and meaningful participation in development processes. Through her work, she seeks to bridge research, policy, and practice to support more inclusive and equitable outcomes for communities affected by climate and environmental change.
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Dr. Lezlie Caro Morinière
MEMBER
Founding Partner, Integrated
Risk Management Associates
(IRMA, LLC)
Tuscon, AZ (USA) and
Paris, France
Lezlie C. Morinière is a climate and disaster risk scientist, evaluator, and co-founder of Integrated Risk Management Associates (IRMA), with an academic background in public health and climate science and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Her work sits at the intersection of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, humanitarian action, early warning, resilience, and environmentally induced human mobility. Across academic, policy, and applied evaluation assignments, she has examined how climate and environmental change interact with migration, displacement, refugees, IDPs, urbanisation, livelihoods, risk governance, and humanitarian protection.
Her climate-mobility work includes a doctoral dissertation on environmentally influenced human mobility; peer-reviewed articles on environment-mobility discourses, environmentally influenced urbanisation, and climate-system interactions; and applied studies for humanitarian and development actors on disaster-, climate-, and environmentally related displacement.
Recent assignments include technical assistance on displacement and migration related to disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation for DG INTPA; a strategic displacement study for Malteser International covering displacement landscapes, mixed migration drivers, refugees and IDPs; and evidence work for Save the Children on climate risk solutions for children, including contexts involving migration and displacement. She brings CMARN a combination of conceptual scholarship, mixed-methods evaluation practice, and long-standing operational experience in humanitarian and climate-risk and disaster risk-climate finance settings.
Email: lmoriniere@irmassociates.org
Habmo Birwe
MEMBER
Gender & Displacement
Specialist
Data & Research Consultant
FCV & Migration Expert
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Habmo Birwe is a Research, Evaluation and Policy Consultant working on migration, climate change, displacement, gender and social inclusion across West and Central Africa. He has collaborated with organizations including the World Bank, IOM and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie on research, policy analysis and evaluation assignments in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, particularly in the Sahel.
His work focuses on climate mobility, forced displacement, governance and community resilience. He has authored policy briefs, analytical reports and publications on climate-related displacement and migration governance in Africa.
His recent publications in Forced Migration Review and GlobalDev examine resilience, governance and policy responses to climate mobility in the Sahel.
Articles available here: [https://www.fmreview.org/climate-choices-plus/birwe/] | [https://globaldev.blog/climate-mobility-in-the-sahel-from-crisis-response-to-governance/]
Habmo Birwe holds master’s degrees in Environmental Policy from Sciences Po Lyon and Migration Studies from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.
Email: birwehabmo@gmail.com
Grace Amponsah
MEMBER
Centre for Migration Studies
University of Ghana
Legon - Accra
Grace Ohene Amponsah is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana. She has a background in Geography and Resource Development with specialization in Disaster Risk Management (MPhil), University of Ghana.
She is an emerging academic and researcher with strong interests in climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, and migration decision-making. She is passionate about research that informs sustainable development, resilience building and policy formulation in vulnerable communities.
Grace is a Principal Instructor in Occupational Health and Safety Management and the Head of the Research and Information Unit at the Hotel Catering and Tourism Training Institute (HOTCATT), Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts (MoTCCA) Ghana. She is experienced in teaching, student mentorship, academic writing and conducting interdisciplinary research.
She has had the opportunity to participate in several international research programs in her field of interest including; the Bergen Summer Research School 2025 with focus on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change and Health, Norway. LERRN Fieldwork Training Course, Carleton University, Department of Political Science and a Fellow of the 2024 Climate Mobility Africa Academy, Kenya.
Email: gracelisamp@gmail.com
