Three new PoliSync hubs

Amid growing environmental, social, political, and economic pressures, there is an urgent need for evidence-based, human-centered, and multi-sector solutions. Yet steep cuts to multilateral cooperation, humanitarian aid, and sustainable development have created critical gaps—and demand for organizations that can deliver innovative, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented policy responses.

In mid-2025, PoliSync launched three new hubs to meet this challenge:

  1. Strategic Policy Hub, which drives evidence-based, forward-looking, and silo-breaking solutions across policy issues, and amid mounting global pressures;

  2. Humanitarian Connect, advancing integrated approaches at the Humanitarian–Sustainable Development–Peace nexus; and

  3. Migration Shift, rethinking migration governance and solutions. 

Together, these hubs power research, capacity-building, collaboration, and innovation through global partnerships. They embody PoliSync’s mission to break silos, center lived experience, and harness policy, technology, and communications for systems-level change.

Strategic policy hub

Director: Dr Cecilia Cannon

Technical leads: Naledi Hollbruegge (strategy, data); Eleni Argyropoulou (AI learning, communications, stakeholder engagement)

PoliSync’s Strategic Policy Hub channels our founding mission into a center for bold, evidence-based, and forward-looking approaches to international policy. In an era of climate change, conflict, forced migration, and weakened multilateralism—when many actors are forced into short-term, reactive responses—the Hub stays focused on long-term, systems-level impact.

It cuts across policy domains and governance levels to drive integrated, innovative, and silo-breaking solutions, grounded in research and designed for real-world problem-solving. Alongside advancing PoliSync’s own cross-cutting projects, the Hub creates space for partners to strengthen policy and stakeholder-engagement skills.

Through research, capacity-building, and dialogue, the Strategic Policy Hub supports collective efforts to rethink how global challenges are addressed.

  • AI for Nonprofits: Webinar series (phase one) and online Certificate in Applied AI, with tools, resources, and use cases (phase two)

  • Research mapping & digital tool: Actors working on AI in International Geneva

  • Research: Privileges & immunities in UN agencies and implications for sustainable reform

  • Policy skills workshops:

    • Influence international policy

    • Communicate research effectively

    • Build effective multi-stakeholder partnerships

    • Apply data visualization in policy & development

Humanitarian connect

Director: Coming soon

Tech4Good Director: Sandra Uwantege Hart

Humanitarian Connect is PoliSync’s systems innovation hub for building more inclusive and resilient futures in humanitarian contexts. Working across the humanitarian–development–peace–climate nexus, it equips local actors with the research, tools, technologies, and partnerships they need to lead change.

With a focus on context-driven problem-solving and digital innovation, the hub supports frontline actors and donors alike in creating scalable, evidence-based solutions to today’s complex humanitarian challenges. Its vision: international systems that enable, not manage, local actors.

Current projects and workshops:

  • Innovation in Syria-related aid & assistance funds: digital payment solutions for humanitarian actors

  • Overcoming de-risking and over-compliance

    • High-level advisory group on humanitarian fund transfer solutions

    • Exploring fintech options for humanitarian transactions in Northwest Syria

  • Workshops:

    • Sanctions Training for Humanitarian Actors

    • Humanitarian Training for Sanctions Policy Practitioners

    • Tech for Good for Humanitarian & Development Organizations

Migration shift hub

Director: Dr Marie McAuliffe

Migration Shift is PoliSync’s hub for reimagining migration systems through rigorous research, data-driven insights, bold policy design, and inclusive engagement. It seeks to transform how migration is understood, governed, and experienced - driving policy innovation, shifting narratives, and centering the voice and leadership of people on the move.

Bringing together PoliSync’s strengths in policy research, data visualization, Tech4Good, capacity building, and storytelling, the hub challenges restrictive, securitized migration approaches and advances forward-looking, human-centered alternatives. From influencing governance to amplifying migrant-led innovation, Migration Shift serves as a resource for understanding migration dynamics, shaping responsive policy, and fostering cross-sector collaboration to catalyze change.

Current projects and workshops:

  • The impacts of migration securitization

  • Migration and displacement in UN reform

  • Gender implications of migration in an uncertain world

  • Migration Makes Us Stronger: positive migration narratives

  • Evidence use in economic policymaking: migration as a strategic asset

  • Geneva Refugees & Migrants Digital Museum: stories of movement, sanctuary, belonging, and transformation

  • Workshops:

    • Innovative policy approaches to address irregular migration

Boost your policy skills

  • Sanctions training for humanitarian actors

    10, 17, 24 September and 1 October, 2024, online

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  • Influence international policy

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  • Transform research into policy impact

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  • Publication

    Effectiveness of Humanitarian Exceptions to Sanctions: Lessons from the Syria Earthquake by Dr. Erica Moret

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  • Publication

    Background brief: Exploring solutions to irregular migration by Dr. Cecilia Cannon

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  • Publication

    From promise to practice: A cross-institutional analysis of design trends, enablers and challenges in blockchain-enabled cash and voucher delivery by Sandra Uwantege Hart

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  • The fundamentals of data visualisation

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