A/ProfOlga Oleinikova

Dr Olga Oleinikova is an Associate Professor of Migration and Director of the Global Institute of Emerging Human Mobilties (GIEHM) at the School of Communication and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. She is known internationally for her work in migration governance, forced displacement, and democracy - in particular the intersection of the three with her work on Ukrainian migration, war-driven displacement, and emerging forms of human mobility such as climate and reproductive mobility. She has been named among Forbes Top 40 Global Ukrainians and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, and was a finalist for the Australian Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Future Leader Award.

Dr Oleinikova is the author of several acclaimed publications, including Refugees at University (Palgrave, 2026), New Eastern European Migration to Australia: From Ukraine, Czech Republic and Hungary (Palgrave, 2023), Achiever or Survivor? Life Strategies of Migrants from Crisis Regimes (Palgrave, 2020), and editor of Democracy, Diaspora, Territory: Europe and Cross-Border Politics (Routledge, 2019).

She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Sydney in 2016 and has held prestigious research fellowships at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Oxford University's European Studies Centre, Charles University in Prague, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Dr Oleinikova is the founder and director of the SITAD Visiting Fellowship Program — the first Australian fellowship initiative dedicated to supporting Ukrainian early-career researchers and postgraduate students. She has secured over $3 million in funding for research and social initiatives.

A leading public intellectual, she was ranked among the top three media experts at UTS in 2024/2025, with an estimated media reach of over 9.1 million people. Her expert commentary is frequently featured in BBC News, Bloomberg, ABC News, CNA, The Conversation, Politico, SBS, and KyivPost. She has delivered more than 30 keynote and invited talks at leading institutions worldwide, including Oxford University, WZB Berlin, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, and the University of Sydney.