Peter McMullin
Centre on Statelessness

• Dr Philippa Garrard

  

  Philippa Garrard has a doctorate in Creative Writing from RMIT University. She has been at the University of Melbourne since 2012 working in a number of roles supporting and fostering interdisciplinary research. She coordinated the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences Research Domains before moving to the Research, Innovation and Commercialisation team supporting the Hallmark Research Initiatives. She commenced at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness in May 2018.

• Deirdre Brennan

  

  Deirdre Brennan (BSc University College Cork and MA Utrecht University) is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Deirdre’s first encounter with statelessness was in 2011, through her interactions with friends affected by the issue in Mae Sai, Thailand. She was struck by the sense of claustrophobia imposed on young people when their right to travel, work or receive an education was restricted by their stateless status. Since then, Deirdre has sought to communicate the impacts of statelessness and the lived experiences of those affected by statelessness. Prior to joining the Centre Deirdre has worked in a variety of research roles in this field, including the Statelessness Programme’s 2014 Thailand Project on the nexus between statelessness and human trafficking, the 2015 Equal Rights Trust publication on gender discrimination in nationality laws, and most recently as a research fellow with the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion where she co-authored a children’s book on childhood statelessness.

  Deirdre’s doctoral thesis focuses on activism among stateless communities in Nepal and the potential impact of the social movement there to eradicate gender discriminatory nationality laws. Her research interests concern the intersections between feminism, statelessness and activism, stemming from her personal connection to the transformative work of pro-choice activists in Ireland.

• Adrienne Anderson

  

  Adrienne Anderson (BA/LLB University of Auckland and LLM University of Michigan) is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, and Research Associate on the joint project ‘The Concept of “Imminence” in the International Protection of Refugees and Other Forced Migrants’, with Professors Michelle Foster, Hélène Lambert and Jane McAdam. She was previously Resettlement Officer for UNHCR in Uganda, Policy Officer and Solicitor at the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre (now Refugee Legal), Research Associate to Professors James Hathaway and Michelle Foster on the Law of Refugee Status, second edition (CUP, 2014), and Legal Associate at the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority.

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• Brandais York

  

  Brandais York is a PhD Candidate at Melbourne Law School, in affiliation with the Melbourne Social Equity Institute’s Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Coming from a background of practical experience in development, Brandais’ research explores the intersections between law and development, gender and migration, and foreign influence and shifting legal norms. Her research interests are particularly focused on female migration in Southeast Asia and her doctoral thesis looks at Cambodian female marriage migrants in China.

  Her thesis has been in part funded by Professor Susan Kneebone’s ARC grant entitled, “Towards Development of a Legal Framework for Regulation of International Marriage Migration,” under which she has also worked as a Research Assistant since 2015. Together with Professor Kneebone, she has conducted field research and review on this topic in Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China.

  Brandais holds an MSc in Global Migration from University College London as well as an MA in Public Policy and International Affairs from The American University of Paris. Prior to joining Melbourne Law School, she worked as a migration and research consultant for a local human rights NGO in Phnom Cambodia from 2012 – 2015.

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Statelessness Intensive Lecturers

• Professor Michelle Foster

  

  Michelle Foster is a Professor and the inaugural Director of the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School.   Michelle has published widely in the field of international refugee law, including International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation (CUP, 2007) and, with James Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition, (CUP, 2014). Michelle’s most recent publications explore various legal issues concerning the recognition and protection of stateless persons, including a monograph with Professor Helene Lambert, entitled The Protection of Stateless Persons in International Refugee Law (forthcoming OUP, 2018).   Michelle teaches Refugee Law and International Refugee Law at Melbourne Law School, and in 2017 taught in the International Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

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• Mr Christoph Sperfeldt

  

  Christoph Sperfeldt commenced as a Senior Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness on the 1st June 2018. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. Christoph came to the issue of statelessness from a bottom-up perspective, examining the development and peace implications resulting from the marginalisation of vulnerable populations. Christoph brings to the role more than ten years of experience in researching and working on human rights, statelessness and transitional justice, predominantly in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to joining the Centre, he was Deputy Director at the Asian International Justice Initiative, a joint program of the East-West Center and the WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Stanford University, where he supported human rights and rule of law capacity development in Southeast Asia; and Senior Advisor with the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Cambodia. Christoph has published widely in the field of human rights and transitional justice.

• Ms Timnah Baker

  

  Timnah Rachel Baker (BA/LLB Monash University and LLM Boston College) commenced as a Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness on the 1st March 2018. She is currently a PhD candidate at Sydney Law School.  From 2009 - 2017 she was based at Harvard University as a Research Associate for the International Migration Policy and Law Analysis (IMPALA) project, and was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

• Mr Amal De Chickera

  

  Amal is a co-founder and co-director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. He has worked in the statelessness field for over ten years, during which time he has researched, advocated, written, spoken, delivered training and served as an expert on statelessness and related issues for the UN, NGOs and academia. Amal leads the Institute’s human rights advocacy programme and it’s work on statelessness and discrimination. He also plays an important part in the Institute’s work on childhood statelessness, legal identity, citizenship stripping and forced migration, as well as its partnership and outreach with civil society, stateless activists and artists. Amal is particularly interested in the nexus between statelessness and discrimination (including against minorities) and its implications on access to other rights. Before co-founding the Institute, Amal provided the lead on the Equal Rights Trust’s statelessness work. He was also one of the co-founders of the European Network on Statelessness and is a founding member of Stages, a Sri Lankan theatre group. A human rights lawyer and member of the Sri Lankan Bar, Amal holds an LLM (Distinction) from University College London and an LLB (Hons.) from the University of Colombo.

• Ms Erika Feller

  

  From 2014 to 2017 Erika Feller held the appointment of Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne, located in the Melbourne School of Government.  She is currently a Professorial Fellow in the School of Government, serving at the same time in various advisory capacities outside the University, including as a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Humanitarian Advisory Group, a social enterprise working to elevate the profile of humanitarian action in Asia and the Pacific.
  
  Erika’s experience with the statelessness portfolio spans many years at very high levels of seniority.  UNHCR is the agency in the UN system with the mandate to protect and assist stateless persons.  This is predominantly a protection function.  Erika oversaw the protection policy and delivery in UNHCR for over 13 years, first in her capacity as Director of the Division of International Protection and then during her 7 years as UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.  
  
  Prior to these respective appointments she had, among others, progressively senior positions within DIP, each of which regularly involved her in activities on behalf of stateless people.  These activities have variously included running a series of training courses on the statelessness protection framework for Government officials throughout the Baltic countries; undertaking advocacy missions to countries hosting large groups of stateless persons [for example Vietnam and Thailand, Albania and Montenegro]; visiting stateless populations and discussing possible solutions with host states [notably the Rohingyas in Myanmar]; participating in consultations on the drafting of citizenship laws in an effort to avoid statelessness [for example in Sudan, prior to the breakup of the country into two]; overseeing promotional activities like the drafting of the joint UNHCR/IPU Handbook for Parliamentarians on Statelessness; addressing UN meetings in New York on statelessness; and engagement on numerous stateless cases under UNHCR’s mandate.  Most recently she was instrumental in organising the UNHCR/Melbourne University Workshop on Researching Statelessness and Citizenship in Asia and the Pacific held at Melbourne Law School from 27-29 January 2016.

• Radha Govil

  

  Radha Govil is a Senior Legal Officer (Statelessness) in the Division of International Protection at UNHCR, where she has worked on issues relating to nationality and statelessness since 2010. Radha has helped to develop UNHCR doctrine and policy on statelessness in a number of areas, including in relation to the definition of a stateless person under international law and the implementation framework for the #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness. Prior to working at UNHCR, Radha worked as a solicitor in Australia on issues of environment law at Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now King Wood Mallesons). She holds an LL.B. and a BA from the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, for which she was awarded the Lauterpacht/Higgins and Georg Schwarzenberger Prizes for Best Performance in International Law.

• Professor Susan Kneebone

  

  Over the last decade Susan’s research, teaching and publications have focussed on forced migration, including refugees, statelessness and citizenship, in South East Asia (SEA).   In 2006, she was awarded an ARC Linkage Grant: LP0667748; ‘Australia’s Response to Trafficking in Women: Towards a Model for the Regulation of Forced Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region’ (with Julie Debeljak and Bernadette McSherry).  A second ARC Linkage Grant followed in 2009: LP0990168; ‘Delivering Effective Protection to Victims and Prevention of Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region’.  Additionally, in 2009 she received an ARC Discovery Grant as sole Chief Investigator: DP09844404; ‘Law, Governance and Regulation of Intra-Regional Labour Migration in South East Asia: An Agenda for Protection and Development’.

  As a result of research conducted under these projects Susan has extensive experience researching in SEA.  The issue of statelessness is a relevant vulnerability factor in human trafficking, especially regarding children of migrant workers and victims of forced marriage (as detailed in two reports arising under LP0990168).  The issue of citizenship is important to understanding the rights of migrant workers.  Susan’s current ARC Discovery Grant is directly relevant to these issues as it has a focus on the nationality and rights of children of marriage migrants, many of whom are stateless as a result of operation of laws.  Through this project, her geographic focus extends to East Asia (Taiwan and South Korea) and her substantive focus statelessness and the rights of children.

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• Professor Kim Rubenstein

  

  Professor Kim Rubenstein’s expertise in citizenship law, through her book, scholarly articles and book chapters is of significance to other academic scholarship, teaching, as well as public policy. Kim was appointed a consultant to the Commonwealth in its redrafting of Australian citizenship legislation, resulting in the 2007 Act and later was a member of the Independent Expert Committee set up to review the Australian Citizenship Test that reported in 2008. In 2012 she was appointed an ANU Public Policy Fellow and was named in the first batch of Westpac '100 Women of Influence' Australian Financial Review awards for her work in public policy. In October 2013 she was awarded the inaugural Edna Ryan award for 'leading feminist changes in the public sphere'.

  Her present research involves engaging with concepts of active citizenship with the support of two Australian Research Council grants. Her oral history Linkage Project on Trailblazing Women and the Law, with the National Library of Australia, the National Foundation for Australian Women, the Federal Court of Australia, the Family Court of Australia and the Australian Women Lawyers examines how the status of being a lawyer frames women’s capacity to be active citizens.

  Her ARC Discovery Project on The Court as Archive examines the place of Superior Courts of Record within the context of public law and citizenship: Can current conceptualisations of the role of Chapter III courts be extended to deepen an understanding of their function as guardians and producers of the civic experience and expectations of the Australian litigants who come before them?

  Professor Rubenstein was the Inaugural Convenor of the ANU Gender Institute in 2011-2012 and for the first semester of 2016 she was Acting Convenor of the ANU Gender Institute. Professor Rubenstein is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.

• Professor John Tobin

  

  Professor John Tobin is the Francine McNiff Chair in International Human Rights Law at Melbourne Law School.  He is an internationally recognised expert in human rights with special expertise in children’s rights. In 2010, he was awarded the Barbara Falk Award for Teaching Excellence by the University of Melbourne and in 2011 he was awarded a national citation for outstanding contribution to student learning in the area of human rights.

  Professor Tobin’s expertise with respect to children’s rights has particular salience for the Centre in light of the fact that UNHCR estimates that there is a stateless child being born at least every 10 minutes, and observes that the effects of being born stateless are profound especially in terms of access to the most basic of human rights such as medical care. Therefore, research and advocacy with regard to the link between children’s rights and statelessness is essential to finding solutions to statelessness.

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• Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs

  

  Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs is a current Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She was the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2012-2017.

  Gillian was Dean of the Faculty of Law and Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney from 2007-12 and Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 2005-7. She is a former Barrister with Seven Wentworth Chambers and a Governor of the College of Law.

  Gillian graduated in Law from the University of Melbourne in 1968 and gained a PhD in 1982. She has combined an academic career with international commercial legal practice and worked with governments and international organisations advising on including law including human rights law. She is focused on the implementation in Australian law of the human rights treaties to which Australia is a party, and on working with nations in the Asia Pacific region on practical approaches to human rights.Gillian has been a consultant on International Law to King & Wood Mallesons, the Australian representative on the Council of Jurists for the Asia Pacific Forum for National Human Rights Institutions, Chair of the Board of the Australian International Health Institute, a member of the Attorney General's International Legal Service Advisory Council and Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans.

  She is the author of many books and paper, including International Law: Contemporary Principles and Practices (Second Edition, 2011).

  Gillian also served the Commission as Acting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner from 1 August 2016 to 9 February 2017.