Iryna Lapshyna has a Phd in International Economics. She is a lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv). Previously, Iryna was a Senior Researcher at COMPAS, University of Oxford where she worked on the project ‘Does immigration enforcement matter? Irregular immigrants and control policies in the UK’ funded by the ESRC (2016-2017).

She was also a grant holder of the British Academy and completed a project on the Ukrainian Diaspora in the UK and Poland (“Do Diasporas matter? Exploring the potential role of Diaspora in the reform and post-conflict reconstruction of Ukraine”, 2015-2016).

Prior to this, she worked as national expert on an EU-funded FP7 project “Imagining Europe from the outside” (2010-2013). From 2002 to 2014, she was Associate Professor at Lviv Academy of Commerce, Ukraine. Her research focuses on labour migration, irregular migration, individual perceptions and aspirations, diaspora, corruption and human capital development.

She has published a book ‘Human capital development in Ukraine’ (2008) and articles include: ‘Нерегулярные мигранты в Великобритании: несогласованность между моралью и законностью’ [‘The tension between morality and legality in the case of irregular migrants or how migrants appropriate existing undocumented statuses?’] (2017); ‘Migration, Life Satisfaction, Return and Development: The Case of a Deprived Post-Soviet Country (Ukraine)’ (2015, with F. Duvell); ‘The EuroMaidan Protests, Corruption, and War in Ukraine: Migration Trends and Ambitions’ (2015, with F. Duvell); ‘Corruption as a driver of migration aspirations: the case of Ukraine’ (2014); ‘Migration aspirations, motivations and emergence of migration culture in Ukraine’ (2013); ‘Transformational changes and challenges for human capital development in the context of Ukrainian labour migration (2012)’.