Dr. Fyssa is a sociologist and postdoctoral researcher working at the intersection of migration governance, border regimes, and the politics of space. She serves as Principal Researcher for Subproject 4, within Research Unit 2 and completed her PhD in Sociology (Cum Laude, March 2025) at the University of Basel under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bilgin Ayata.

Her regional expertise lies in Greece, and more specifically in the Greek–Turkish Eastern Aegean maritime borderscape. Her research examines the transformation of European border governance through the concept of border elasticity and infrastructure space, with a particular focus on the EU Hotspot Approach in Greece. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2019, 2023, and 2025—primarily on the Eastern Aegean islands (Samos, Lesvos, Chios, Kos, and Leros), as well as in Athens—her work analyzes how migration infrastructures operate as sites of extrastatecraft, reshaping socio-political relations, forms of governance, and everyday life in island border regions.

In May 2025, together with Prof. Dr. Bilgin Ayata, she co-designed and organized an interdisciplinary Research Studio on Samos focusing on migration infrastructures and border transformations in the Aegean, bringing together academics, practitioners, artists, journalists, and local stakeholders. In her forthcoming monograph, Dr. Fyssa develops a theoretically grounded and empirically rich analysis of the EU Hotspot Approach in Greece, advancing the concepts of border elasticity and infrastructure space to explain the reconfiguration of contemporary European border regimes. The book traces how migration infrastructures function as elastic and adaptive governance dispositifs, producing enduring socio-political effects in island border regions. She has also contributed chapters on the Greek case study to a forthcoming edited volume on the Hotspots in the Mediterranean Borderscape.

Overall, Dr. Fyssa brings an interdisciplinary and transnational academic formation, combined with early professional experience in research, media, and civil society contexts. She holds a joint Master of Science (Erasmus Mundus, 4 Cities) in Urban Studies, completed with great distinction, awarded by Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université libre de Bruxelles, Universität Wien, Københavns Universitet, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her studies were supported by a combined Erasmus Mundus scholarship, as well as a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation. She also holds an interdisciplinary Master of Arts in Music Culture and Communication from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, which she entered with the support of a merit-based IKY award. Before pursuing an academic career, she worked as a web editor for major media outlets in Athens and as a project proposal writer and coordinator for NGOs in Thessaloniki.