If you are interested in visiting the Centre or becoming an external affiliate, please, get in touch with the Centre Director: Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax (v.moreno-lax@qmul.ac.uk).
Find out more about the School of Law’s Visiting Scholar scheme and Visiting Research Student programme.
Dr Valentina Azarova is an international legal academic and practitioner who works on movement law, transformative justice and trauma-informed approaches to international and interpersonal violence. Dr Azarova is a member of the collective Feminist Autonomous Research Centre for Research, and co-founder of the de:border // migration justice collective and Emergent Justice Collective.
Dr Azarova has worked as a Visiting Academic at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester. They co-founded and taught in the BA programme in Human Rights and International Law at Al-Quds Bard College, Al-Quds University. They held lecturing positions at Birzeit University and the University of the Holy Spirit of Kaslik in Lebanon, and research positions at Central European University and Koç University’s for Global Public Law in Istanbul. They hold a PhD in Law from NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Human Rights. Additionally, Dr Azarova regularly advises UN bodies and fact-finding missions, states and non-governmental organisations.
Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche is Professor of law at the International, European and Comparative Law Center of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, member of the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, and Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She leads the MOEBIUS research project “Sovereignty ordering migrations inside European borders. Uses v. Ethics”. Her research evaluates the legitimacy of the political systems of the European Union and its Member States. In particular, she studies the effectiveness of fundamental rights protections, notably examining the situations of exceptions and considering the conditions of margins. Thus, within this research she addresses the serious crises which allow the concentration of powers and the restriction of rights, as well as the legal confinement which can conduce to power abuses and rights infringements. She concentrates her analysis on the EU immigration and asylum norms and their compatibility with international and European instruments of human rights protection.
Dr Malak Benslama-Dabdoub is a Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway University of London. She specialises in the areas of refugee law, statelessness, nationality, and decolonialiry - with a particular focus on the MENA region.
Dr Marcia Vera Espinoza is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health and Development (IGHD) at Queen Margaret University, in Edinburgh. Marcia is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose main areas of specialisation sit at the intersection of development, political and social geography. Her work is at the forefront of migration and refugee research in Latin America, driving agendas on the study of inclusion of migrant and refugee populations and migration governance in the region, and beyond. At the IGHD, Marcia leads the Psychosocial Wellbeing, Integration and Protection Cluster.
Marcia is a co-founding member of the research group Comparative Analysis in International Migration and Displacement in the Americas (CAMINAR). She is also PI of the EU-AMIF project ‘New Scots Integration: A Pathway to Social and Economic Inclusion’, and Co-I of a recently awarded RSE Research Grant to explore long-term refugee integration in Scotland. Marcia was also Co-PI of the project 'Migration, Pandemic and Responses from the Third Sector: Lessons from Brazil and India'.
Before joining Queen Margaret University, Dr Vera Espinoza was a Lecturer in Human Geography at Queen Mary University of London and an associate researcher in the ERC funded project ´Prospects for International Migration Governance´ (MIGPROSP) at the University of Sheffield. She has recently published in Comparative Migration Studies, Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Migration and Society, Geopolitics, Global Policy, and Development Policy Review, among others. Her co-edited books include 'The Dynamics of Regional Migration Governance' (Edward Elgar, 2019) and 'Latin America and Refugee Protection: regimes, logics and challenges' (Berghahn Books, 2021).
Dr Maja Grundler is a Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). Her research focuses on the intersection of refugee law and irregular migration, human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Her wider research interests include the scope and boundaries of the refugee definition, nationality discrimination in the context of migration, migrant agency, and vulnerability. Prior to joining RHUL, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher for the PROTECT Project at QMUL. Maja holds a PhD in Law from QMUL and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. She is a research Affliate at the Refugee Law Initiative and has co-founded and co-chairs the Human Trafficking Research Network. Maja has published her research in the International Journal of Law in Context, the International Journal of Refugee Law and Frontiers in Human Dynamics, among others.
Dr Magugliani is a Lecturer in Law at University of Kent. Their research focusses on critical migration and borders studies, vulnerability and queer theory, and critical approaches to international law. Dr Magugliani is a co-founder of de:border // migration justice collective wherein they undertake collaborative strategic litigation on border violence.
Dr Magugliani previously taught at the University of Galway. They are currently a Research Fellow in Anti-Trafficking Law and Policy at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). Dr Magugliani holds a PhD in Law from NUI Galway. Additionally, they are a Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons and a Legal Researcher with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).
Dr Tamara Tubakovic is a Lecturer in Public Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne. Tamara completed her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Melbourne. Broadly, her research centres on government formulation of contemporary asylum and irregular immigration policies. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the European Commission's role in EU asylum policy reforms, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. The book, 'Formulating an Asylum Policy for Europe', analyses the institutional and political factors that shape the European Commission's policy formulation process in such a contentious and politicised policy domain. She has also published on regional approaches to refugee responsibility-sharing, Australia's offshore detention regime, Australia-UK policy transfer on refugee externalisation, and the role of ideas in policy learning and crisis management.
Prior to joining the University of Melbourne in 2024, Tamara was a postdoctoral fellow in Public Policy and Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she convened courses on public policy theory, public management and regulation. She was also the Research Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ Network, The Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies (CONREP), and Teaching Fellow in Public Policy and European Studies at the University of Warwick.
Professor Niovi Vavoula was recently appointed Associate Professor and Chair in Cyber Policy at the University of Luxembourg. Prior to the appointment she was Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Migration and Security at the School of Law of Queen Mary University of London (2022-2024) and Lecturer in Migration and Security at the same University (2018-2022), as well as Tutor in EU law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2017-18). Prof. Vavoula holds a Ph.D. (2017) and an LLM in European Law, both from Queen Mary University of London.
Her research interests lie primarily in the intersection of digital technologies and law and more broadly in IT law, Immigration law, Data Protection law, Artificial Intelligence and EU Criminal law on which areas Prof. Vavoula has published extensively (e.g. in Common Market Law Review, German Law Journal, European Journal of Risk Regulation, European Law Review and European Law Journal).
Sarah Wolff is a Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at the University of Leiden. Her research concentrates on EU-UK foreign and security cooperation, EU migration and asylum policies, EU-Middle East and North Africa, as well as EU’s policies on gender and religion abroad. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal Mediterranean Politics. Her book Michigan University Press on ‘Secular Power Europe and Islam: Identity and foreign policy’ (summer 2021) was conducted thanks to a Fulbright-Schuman and a Leverhulme research grants.
Ms Seron Arizmendi was a Visiting PhD Student at the (B)OrderS Centre in 2022-23.
As a Public International Law researcher, Natale Seron Arizmendi gathers insights into the set of laws, rules, and legal standards that govern the dynamics of contemporary global reality. Her PhD research examines whether and to which extent individual complaints to international courts and UN Treaty bodies are capable of having an impact on unaccompanied minors’ rights through strategic litigation. For that propose, she uses a follow-up analysis on landmark cases as well as in-depth interviews with actors engaged in an increasing polycentric architecture. The project strives to empower children and adolescents, as a particularly vulnerable group, by providing them with the legal tools and knowledge to vindicate their rights. It further advocates for joining forces with non-traditional actors, including NGOs, media, scholars and other social stakeholders to achieve a long-lasting impact.
Natale’s commitment to a paradigm shift in the international legal milieu is reflected in her work as a Lecturer at the University of Deusto. In her Public International Law and European Union Law lectures she encourages her students to approach the law from a broad strategic perspective, focusing on the cause behind the case.
Dr Sara Dehm is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney. Her research expertise is in the history and theory of international migration and refugee law, with a focus on practices of border control, knowledge production and migrant resistance. Her first book, Administering Migration: International Law and the Global Ordering of People, explores how international organisations have regulated human mobility over the course of the 20th century, and is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She has also published widely on topics relating to Australian refugee law and practice, including on gender-based harms, necropolitical violence, immigration amnesties, COVID-19 litigation and refugee as workers. Her current project on the health-related harms of Australia’s extraterritorial asylum regime has to date produced a co-authored CONREP policy report (2022) and a parliamentary submission (2023).
Sara is also a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project exploring the journeys, struggles, contributions and legacies of European émigré jurists, including Jewish refugee lawyers, to Australian law, the legal profession and academia (1930-1960). She is an Associate Member of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School, and an Editorial Board member of the Australian Journal of Human Rights.