Marcin Gońda is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Lodz. He is a Head of Centre of Migration Studies, University of Lodz. He also cooperates with the Centre for Migration Research, University of Warsaw. He was a leder and contributor to numerous research and educational projects on migrants’ integration. His research interests cover return migration and diaspora policies, educational migration, internationalisation of higher education, migration in the Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet area, transformation of migration policies of EU member states and implementation of qualitative research methods (including biographical approach) in migration studies.

Head of the interdiscipilnary Centre for Migration Studies. The Centre was established at the beginning of 2020. The idea of establishing a university-wide unit undertaking interdisciplinary research on migration was born in spring 2019 among sociologists from the Faculty of Economics and Sociology of the University of Lodz. It was related to the observed continuous increase in the number of foreign nationals staying both in the Lodz Voivodeship and on a national scale. This phenomenon is part of a process of global scope, as part of which Poland is transformed from a traditionally emigration country into a country attractive for the settlement of immigrants. 

Observations carried out at the level of social sciences seemed insufficient, which is why researchers representing most of the university's Faculties were invited to cooperate in the creation of the Centre: economists, demographers, lawyers, geographers, historians and political scientists.

The objectives set for the Centre include, among others:

• interdisciplinary research on all manifestations of migration, including those of a local and transnational, economic and refugee nature, conducted using various theoretical and methodological perspectives,
• research cooperation with other scientific institutions from Poland and abroad, business, public administration and non-governmental organisations,
• organisation of scientific meetings, implementation of research grants or preparation of publications and events that popularise knowledge about human mobility.