Organizers

Steve Bender
Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development
Seattle University School of Law
UNITED STATES
Professor Steven Bender is a national academic leader on immigration law and policy, as well as an expert in real estate law. Among his honors, the Minority Groups Section of the Association of American Law Schools presented him with the C. Clyde Ferguson, Jr., Award, a prestigious national award recognizing scholarly reputation, mentoring of junior faculty, and teaching excellence. His research interests coincide with his classroom teaching, which encompasses subjects as diverse as Business Associations, Property, Real Estate Transactions, UCC Secured Transactions, Contracts, Externship Seminars, and Latina/os and the Law. Associate Dean Bender is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and the American College of Mortgage Attorneys. During 2009-2011, Bender served as co-president of the national Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). He also served as the co-chair and is a longtime board member of LatCrit (Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory Inc).

Veronica Fynn Bruey 
Assistant Professor, Athabasca University, CANADA
Director, Flowers School of Global Health Sciences, GHANA, GERMANY
Research Affiliate, Refugee Law Initiation, University of London, ENGLAND
Faculty Affiliate,  Seattle University School of Law, UNITED STATES
President, International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, INTERNATIONAL
A multi-award winner, an author, a passionate academic-advocate, and an innovator. She holds six academic degrees from world-class institutions across four continents, Dr Fynn Bruey has researched, taught, consulted, and presented at conferences in over 25 countries. In 2002, she founded Africa Awareness, a student driven initiative responsible for instituting the first and only African Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. In 2009, she founded the Journal of Internal Displacement, the only scholarly platform committed to global displacement concerns. In 2018, she founded the Voice of West African Refugees (VOWAR) at the Buduburam Refugee Settlement in Ghana. She is a co-founder and Executive Director of Director of Tuki-Tumarankeh, a 501c focused on global displacement, migration, and development issues and a co-investigator of a CIHR research grant on “Combating Stigma Among People Living with Lymphatic Filariasis in Ghana”. She is also the Director of Flowers School of Global Health Science, a faculty affiliate at Seattle University School of Law, a research affiliate with the University of London’s Refugee Law Initiative; co-founded the Law and Society’s Collaborative Research Network (CRN) 11: “Displaced Peoples”; and leads the Law and Society Association’s International Research Collaborative (IRC) 10: “Disrupting Patriarchy and Masculinity in Africa”. Dr Fynn Bruey has authored four books, several book chapters, and peer review journal articles. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Legal Studies Department of Athabasca University in Canada. She is a born and bred Liberian war survivor.

Researchers

Solomon Tekle Abegaz
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Gondar School of Law
ETHIOPIA
Dr. Solomon Tekle Abegaz is currently an Assistant Professor of law at the School of Law of University of Gondar in Ethiopia, and lectures on part-time at the College of Law and Governance Studies, Addis Ababa University, in the same country.  He formerly served as legal counsel at Ethiopian Airlines Group, and taught law again on a part-time basis at Rift-Valley University in Ethiopia. He has published articles and commentaries including in the area of children’s and women’s rights. His research area is international human rights and international air law.

Megan Ballard
Professor of Law
Gonzaga University School of Law
UNITED STATES
Professor Megan Ballard joined the faculty at Gonzaga University School of Law in 2004.  She taught as an Associate Professor at Washburn University from 2000 to 2004. Prior to law teaching, Ballard served as a law clerk for Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a pro bono attorney in Cambodia, and practiced law at the firms of Perkins Coie, in Seattle, Washington and Foley & Lardner in Madison, Wisconsin.  Ballard earned her J.D., LL.M. (Law and Globalization), as well as an M.A. in Ibero-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Much of Ballard’s research has focused on measures to protect the rights of people forcibly evicted from their homes and land by armed conflict.  Her Fulbright grant to Georgia, and Gonzaga University grant to Colombia allowed her to concentrate on property restitution measures undertaken in both countries.  Her current research explores the resettlement of refugees in the United States.  Ballard’s public service work has involved creating a curriculum and coordinating workshops to teach refugees and immigrants about the U.S. legal system. She also has provided pro bono representation for asylum applicants.

Alma Begicevic
Sociology
Lecturer, Loyola University
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Born in Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alma came to Chicago as a refugee during the war. In 2019, she earned her PhD in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she studied social and political sciences (main concentration criminology, international law, human rights and law and society). Her other degrees include the M.A in International Relations (main concentration in international human rights law) from the University of Chicago (U.S.) and B.A. Honors cum laude degree in sociology (main concentration, critical theory) from Loyola University Chicago (U.S). She is a qualitative researcher and her professional experience is in the field of international human rights law. Prior to entering academia, she represented the U.S. Government as the senior human rights advisor and the Chief of Anti-Trafficking Unit with the Department of Human Rights and Rule of Law—The U.N. institution building pillar in Kosovo—Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Her research interests include international law, victimology, transitional justice, globalization, displacement, access to justice, reparation as a remedy for mass harms, critical theory and symbolic interaction. As an interdisciplinary academic trained in international public law and social sciences, Alma believes foundational sociological theories are instrumental for understanding, unpacking and critically interpreting contemporary social and global human rights issues; post-war transitions, global migration and globalization. She is passionate about critical thinking that is empathetic, inclusive, collaborative and independent and in her free time, she enjoys painting, designing, cooking and doing yoga. She currently teaches sociology at Loyola University Chicago.

Kinnari Bhatt
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Visiting Fellow, Transnational Law Institute, Kings College
UNITED KINGDOM
Kinnari is a post-doctoral researcher at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam on a project entitled ‘Integrating Normative and Functional Approaches to the Rule of Law and Human Rights’ and is a Visiting Fellow at the Transnational Law Institute, King’s College London.  Prior to completing her PhD, she worked as an English qualified solicitor (LLB Law with French (Birmingham), M.Sc., PhD) gaining several years of experience in the project financing of and legal and regulatory reform for natural resource development projects. Kinnari worked at White and Case LLP and Milbank Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP and served as legal advisor to the Ministry of Mineral Resources in Sierra Leone in a World Bank/DFID funded mining environmental, health and social regulatory drafting project. She also worked as civil society advisor on the Guinean Mining Code for the Natural Resource Governance Institute. Her research interests lie in transnational and comparative law, financing, human rights, land rights, resettlement and legal/regulatory reform. She is interested in mapping contractual areas of overlap and tension for public interests in private law contracts and model agreements and in researching innovative contractual remedies for private and traditional land and property rights under conditions of increasing land encroachment and resettlement. Research interests: private financing, human rights, land rights, resettlement and legal/regulatory reform, transnational and comparative approaches to law.

Magdalena Krystyna Butrymowicz
Associate Professor
The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University
UNITED KINGDOM
Dr. Magdalena Krystyna Butrymowicz is Associate Professor at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, academic visitor on Oxford University and Arizona University and visitor as researcher in the Window Rock – Navaho Country and fellow academic at Trent University in Peterborough in Canada. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the “Library of Law” peer – review research series about vulnerable groups legal, social and economic problems in Poland and across the globe. She started and still conduct the series of conferences concerning the Human Rights and Vulnerable groups in Poland and in Europe. Practising solicitor in human rights law. Here research interests include, Human rights, ethnic minorities, indigenous people, migration, and humanitarian law.

Emmanuel Chima
PhD Researcher
School of Social Work, Michigan State University
UNITED STATES
Emmanuel Chima is a third-year PhD student in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University. His research focuses on experiences surrounding forced displacement, particularly youth transitions and aging. His current research centers on the community at Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. He is a fellow in the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) program; Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW), and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Ubuntu Dialogues.

Adebimpe Desire Fashina
Assistant Lecturer / PhD Candidate
Department of Liberal Studies
Technical University of Mombasa
KENYA
Adebimpe is a social and behavioral change expert, a macroeconomist and a global researcher with a firm grip on economic theory and analytic techniques. Having taken a broad range of course during her undergraduate studies, Adebimpe prepared to be challenged in international development. She holds a Master’s in Human Resources Management and Industrial Relations, which afforded her a specialized training in managing people and potential conflict arising from such a relationship. Besides, her extensive experience in the causes, effects, management, and policy response to the ongoing conflict in Northern Nigerian, she also has first-hand understanding of the conflict issues and processes for resolution in Mombasa, Kenya. Adebimpe research interests include social investment, political economy, peacebuilding, conflict management volunteerism, particularly resilience strategies for victims of internal conflicts in Africa. She is currently an assistant lecturer and PhD candidate at the Department of Liberal Studies, Technical University of Mombasa, Kenya.

Rebecca Hamlin
Assistant Professor of Legal Studies
Department of Political Science
University of Massachusetts
UNITED STATES
Professor Rebecca Hamlin research is focused on law and immigration politics. She is interested in how administrative agencies and courts adjudicate migration and citizenship questions, and the political responses to judicial involvement in migration matters. She has a particular interest in migrant categorization and the concept of a refugee.

Ben Hudson
Lecturer in Law
Exeter University
UNITED KINGDOM
Dr Ben Hudson is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE). Prior to Exeter, Ben was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln (2017-2020), and before that taught at the University of Bristol (2014-2017). Ben’s research primarily concerns internal displacement and international human rights law. His doctoral research identified, examined and elucidated a series of pertinent challenges in law and practice that impact upon the effective realisation and requisite conceptualisation of return as a durable solution to internal displacement. Aside from his work on internal displacement, Ben has also published in the area of cross-border migration, notably examining the concept of vulnerability as utilised by the European Court of Human Rights in its case law pertaining to migrant journeys across the Mediterranean Sea. Ben is a Co-coordinator of the University of Exeter’s interdisciplinary Routes network, and Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Internal Displacement and the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) Working Paper Series. Ben also leads the migration-themed, ‘Managing and Protecting People on the Move’, research stream at the annual UK Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Conference. Ben is an active supporter of Sanctuary Scholarships and other related initiatives that promote access to higher education for persons who have fled persecution and sought asylum in the UK (and elsewhere). In this capacity, Ben sits as a member of the UK Universities of Sanctuary National Steering Group. Ben is also a Director of the Lincolnshire Refugee Doctor Project and a Trustee of Refugee Support Devon.

Rasha Istaiteyeh
Associate Professor in Economics
The Hashemite University
JORDAN

Rasha is an associate professor in Economics at The Hashemite University in Zarqa/Jordan. Her main research interests are human capital theory, economic development, and international migration. She is an affiliate researcher at Georgetown University(USA), Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM). She is also an associate member of Catalyst 2030, a network for pushing into accelerating the SDG2030 Goals through social entrepreneurship and other social innovations. Her research focuses on questions related to migrants’ and refugees’ economic integration and how they influence their home and host countries, respectively. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Kassel in Germany and a B.Sc. and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Jordan.Rasha is of a Jordanian migrant family who lived in Kuwait but left it for Jordan after the Iraqi- invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Niamh Kinchin
Lecturer
School of Law, University of Wollongong
AUSTRALIA
Dr Niamh Kinchin is a lecturer at the School of Law, University of Wollongong, Australia. Niamh teaches Constitutional and Administrative Law and her primary research interests are in global accountability and administrative justice, global administrative law and public law within the Australian context. In 2014 she completed a PhD at the University of New South Wales, which was titled ‘Accountability in the Global Space: Plurality, Complexity and UNHCR’. Her current research focuses upon the meaning and application of administrative justice within the context of the United Nations.

Jason M. Leggett
Assistant Professor
Kingsborough Community College
City University of New York
UNITED STATES
Jason M. Leggett earned a Juris Doctorate from Seattle University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (Honors with Distinction) focused on political participation and communication at the University of Washington in Seattle.  He moved to New York City in 2008 to study public interest legal education and began working for City University of New York in 2010. Jason is the Director of the CUNY Kingsborough Global and Environmental Studies Concentration and has published innovative work on civic learning and democratic engagement. Jason conducts most of his research in Law, Politics and Society. He is presently completing a 10-year study of legal exclusion within the American immigration and health care systems. This book project is broken up into three sections examining: courts and the law, the history of exclusionary legal language, and legal mobilization. In addition, Jason produced a short documentary film and is writing a legal non-fiction narrative about his journey to find an undocumented immigrant who was illegally deported by a private hospital in Florida to better understand the social dimensions involved.

Chien-yu Liu 
S.J.D., Esq.
Senior Associate, EY Law LLP
CANADA
Chien-yu brings insights in U.S. and international migration to EY Law LLP. Having been an expatriate for almost a decade, Chien-yu has a deep understanding of the multi-layered, intersectional challenges facing immigrants. This understanding drives Chien-yu to offer strategy and services to clients in a humane and compassionate way. At EY Law LLP, Chien-yu contributes to the efforts of facilitating migration of individuals to the United States. Besides English, Chien-yu speaks Mandarin Chinese, as well as some French, German, and Arabic. Chien-yu has worked on U.S. and international law and policy issues through research, journalism, and advocacy. Putting global affairs into perspective, Chien-yu has published writings on disaster displacement, forced migration, transgender rights, and gender diversity and inclusion. As an attorney and a legal scholar, Chien-yu gives back to the community by doing pro bono work and serving as a judge in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington, DC.

Anna Lundberg
Professor
Department of Social and Welfare Studies
Division of Social Work
Linköping University
SWEDEN
Anna Lundberg is Professor of Welfare Law at Linköping University and Associate Professor in Human Rights. Lundberg’s research has appeared in, among others, Human Rights in Practice, Refugee Survey Quarterly, International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, Peace Review, Nordic Journal of Migration Research. At present, Anna is the PI of a 5-year project titled ‘Undocumented children’s rights claims. A multidisciplinary project on agency and contradictions between different levels of regulations and practice that reveals undocumented children’s human rights’. The project is financed by the Swedish Research Council. She also is the PI in the recently started project “Advanced legal practices in the welfare state. A study of displacements of the right to social assistance for undocumented persons and poor EU citizens, in three Swedish municipalities” funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare.

Nana Charles Nguindip
Senior Lecturer in law
Faculty of Law and Political Science
University of Dschang
CAMEROON
Nana Charles Nguindip has over eight (8) years’ experience of teaching law.  have huge concern for humanitarian activities especially those related to human Right with kin interest to matters relating to Migrants and Refugee. He specialises in migrants’ rights protection and refugees’ management. He has extensive experience in strategic planning in the operation of migrant’s protection. He examines cases of human right violation with emphasis on minimum protection in Cameroon, Chad, and Gabon. His research interest involves reporting cases of human rights violation against refugees and migrants. He also provides guidelines for the implementation, enforcement and possible enactment of laws and regulations in hopes of protecting refugee rights and status. Nana holds a PhD in immigration law from the University of Yaoundé II, Soa; an MA in refugee law from the University of Yaoundé II, Soa; and a bachelor’s in law from the University of Dschang. He enjoys writing, reading and playing football in his spare time.

Safiya Ahmad Nuhu
Lecturer
Faculty of Law, Bayero University
NIGERIA
Safiya Ahmad Nuhu is a law lecturer from the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. She is presently a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand South Africa, where she is conducting research on the regional framework for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons in Africa. She has worked as an intern at the Brookings Institution, specifically on the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. She was an associate editor (Africa), of the Journal of Internal Displacement (JID).  She has research interests in Human Rights protection of vulnerable classes of persons particularly women and IDPs. Other research interests include International Humanitarian Law, and Migration Law. She is Mandela Washington Fellow (MWF), as well as a member, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP).

Asma Nairi Ozen
Lawyer and Human Rights Activist
Africa Foundation Turkey
TURKEY
Dr. Asma Nairi Ozen is a Tunisian lawyer and human rights activist who has a PhD in International law. She works with refugees throughout the Middle East, serving on different international and civil society organisations in Turkey, including the UNHCR, Amnesty International, and Building Markets. She takes part in different research projects in the field, starting with Libyan refugees in Tunisia, refugees and storytelling in Africa, and the Syrian refugee concerns in Turkey and the local region.

Andrea Pacheco Pacifico
Prof. Dra
Paraiba State University
BRAZIL
Prof Dra Pacheco Pacifico is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Paraiba State University (since 2012). With a focus on forced migration, she is the co-editor of the Journal of International Studies (REI, since 2012); founder/coordinator of the Research and Study Centre on Environmentally Displaced Persons (NEPDA, since 2012); and co-coordinator of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Chair (UNHCR, since 2014). She is also a Full Collaborator Researcher at the Graduate Program of Comparative Studies on Americas at the University of Brasilia (since 2019) and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative, University of London (since 2021). She supervises undergraduate and graduate (MAs and PhDs) students’ dissertations and theses, in addition to managing her research program, with a book forthcoming this year (2022). In the past, she was visiting Research Fellow (VRF) at the University of London Refugee Law Initiative (2020/2021), a VRF at the Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre, UK (2010/2011); and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at York University Centre for Refugee Studies (2009/2010). Prof. Dra Pacheco Pacifico holds a PhD, with distinction, in Social Sciences – Sociology from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (2008); an LLM/MA in International law and Politics/International Relations from Lancaster University, UK (1999); and an LLB in Law from the Federal University of Alagoas (1993).

Norvy Paul
Senior Lecturer, Social Work
The Catholic University of Eastern Africa
KENYA
Dr. Norvy Paul completed his masters from the University of Pune and joined De Paul School of Social Work as an academician in since 2004. His current research work is focused on displacement in India with particular interest on social and cultural capital, marginalisation, human rights and community development. He has authored and edited three books on development induced displacement; published several articles in various national and international journals and presented papers at various forums related to social work and displacement. From 2015-2017, he was an editor of De Paul Journal of Scientific Research, a bi-annual scholarly publication that promotes academic research for the purpose of moulding better science practitioners. Dr Paul is completed a Post-Doctoral Studies at Christ University in Bangalore where he conducted research on development induced displacement and marginalisation in Kerala. He mentors and supervises MPhil and PhD students.

Saša Rajšić

Galya Ruffer
Professor/Director
Political Science/Center for Forced Migration Studies, Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern University
UNITED STATES
Professor Ruffer is the founding Director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies housed at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. Her work centers on refugee and asylum rights and protection, rule of law and the process of international justice. She has published on testimony and justice in the DR Congo, asylum law and policy, human rights litigation in transnational courts and immigrant incorporation and integration in Europe. Her books include Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (co-edited with Benjamin Lawrance), Cambridge University Press (2015) and Prosecution, Persecution, Protection: Doing Justice for Sexual Violence (forthcoming). Aside from her academic work, she has worked as an immigration attorney representing political asylum claimants both as a solo-practitioner and as a pro-bono attorney.

Woldeab Teshome
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Addis Ababa University
ETHIOPIA
Dr. Woldeab Teshome was born in Dessie, North-east of Ethiopia, where he completed primary and secondary education. He did his undergraduate studies in sociology at Addis Ababa University. He was employed in the Ministry of Culture and Sports as junior planning officer and served in various capacities for eight years. In 1988, he joined the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and obtained MSc. in Social Policy and Planning in 1989. Upon returning from England, he continued his service as head of the Planning and Research Department with the Ministry of Culture until August 1992. In September 1992, he became a lecturer in sociology in the Department of Sociology of Addis Ababa University. He has conducted a number of studies on health, governance, irrigation and displaced people. In 2003, he earned his PhD in sociology from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Dr. Teshome serves as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology.

Mengia H. Tschalaer
Marie Curie Research Fellow
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
University of Bristol
UNITED KINGDOM
Mengia H. Tschalaer holds a Ph.D. in law and society and an MA in sociocultural anthropology, international law, and East Asian art history from University of Zurich. As a law and society scholar she focuses on the relationship between politics of knowledge production and human rights, sexualities, mobilities, and religion. Her work is geared towards rendering visible those voices located at the margins that remain silenced – often very deliberately so – in conversations about justice and ideals about the truth. She is currently working on a project which examines the experiences of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers with Muslim background within Germany’s asylum system. She is the author of “Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law, and Activism in India” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and of various articles and chapters on socio-legal resistance, gender and sexuality, and Islam.

Roberto Ariel Abeldaño Zuñiga
Full Professor
Public Health Program
University of Sierra Sur
MEXICO
With a PhD from the National University of Cordoba (2014), Dr. Roberto Ariel Abeldaño has a demonstrated interest in the field of Demography with emphasis on community vulnerability to disaster in Northwest Argentina. As a Full Professor of the University of Sierra Sur, he has worked in research themes related to the environment, disaster, and climate change and Population. Dr. Abeldaño also has experience in the field of Public Health in disaster situations. He is committed to the formation of human capital in these fields of knowledge in Latin American countries.

Anthea Vogl
Associate Lecturer
Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney
AUSTRALIA
Anthea joined the UTS Faculty of Law in 2016. She holds a BA and LLB (Hons) from the University of Sydney, an LLM (Research, Dean’s Honors) from McGill and was awarded her PhD in Law as a Quentin Bryce Doctoral Scholar from the University of Technology Sydney and the University of British Columbia (jointly enrolled).  Her research takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to the regulation of migrants and non-citizens, with a particular focus on the social and legal categories of the refugee and irregular migrant. Her areas of expertise are migration and refugee law, administrative law and legal theory. For the last four years, she has worked between Australia and Canada on qualitative research into refugee narratives and the oral hearing within onshore refugee status determination processes in both countries. Anthea has published in local and international journals and worked as a research associate on nationally and internationally funded competitive research grants. She is admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW. Prior to joining the Faculty, she practised in family law, and in refugee and migrant advocacy in Australian community legal centres and in Canada.