Peter McMullin
Centre on Statelessness

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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Professor Carolyn Evans is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Graduate) and Harrison Moore Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne. Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and where she held a stipendiary lectureship for two years before returning to Melbourne in 2000. She worked for a period as a lawyer at Blake Dawson Waldron after graduating from Melbourne. In 2010, Carolyn was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to allow her to travel as a Visiting Fellow at American and Emory Universities to examine questions of comparative religious freedom.

Carolyn is the author of Legal Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia (Federation Press 2011), Religious Freedom under the European Court of Human Rights (OUP 2001) and co-author of Australian Bills of Rights: The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (LexisNexis 2008). She is co-editor of Religion and International Law (1999, Kluwer); Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region (2006 Martinus Nijhoff) and Law and Religion in Historical and Theoretical Perspective (CUP 2008). She is an internationally recognised expert on religious freedom and the relationship between law and religion and has spoken on these topics in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Greece, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Malaysia, Nepal and Australia.

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.

Santi Kusumaningrum leads PUSKAPA or the Center on Child Protection and Wellbeing PUSKAPA at Universitas Indonesia after she co-founded it in 2010. PUSKAPA positions itself as a research and policy advocacy organization that is data-driven, interdisciplinary, and effective in communicating the science behind solutions to improve children’s access to health, education, justice, and social care. Her previous work experiences include managing child protection program in UNICEF Indonesia for over six years, both in the development and humanitarian contexts, teach and research-assisting in the Criminology Department Universitas Indonesia, and for a short period helping to set up a legal aid service unit in the Indonesian Bar Association. Through PUSKAPA, she commits to applying rigor in situating child wellbeing in the center of development and humanitarian actions.

Santi focuses her work to understand what makes or breaks child wellbeing and resilience; to address challenges concerning legal identity and personhood so that they facilitate -not discriminate, people’s access to public services, justice, and economic opportunities; and to master the politics of evidence-based policy transformations to realize social inclusions in Indonesia. She had published her research on social exclusion in legal identity system in Indonesia on, among others The Lancet, PLOS One, and Bio Med Journal. She also sits on the Advisory Board of Care and Protection of Children Learning Network (CPC). She is in the process of getting her Doctorate in Public Health from Columbia University and has been awarded with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health Award of Excellence in Global Health, in 2017. She hopes to graduate in 2018.

Dr Maryanne Loughry is a Sister of Mercy and psychologist and has worked internationally in refugee settings. She commenced her refugee work with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in South East Asia in 1988. Her doctoral study investigated the effects of detention on unaccompanied children.

From 1996-2004 Dr Loughry was the Pedro Arrupe tutor at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre from where  she  conducted research, programme evaluations and humanitarian training in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, South East Asia and the UK. Presently Dr Loughry is a Research Professor at the School of Social Work, Boston College, Massachusetts and a Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), University of Oxford.

Dr Loughry is a member of the Australian Government's Minister of Immigration' Advisory Council on Asylum Seekers and Detention (MCASD) and serves on the Governing Committee of the International Catholic Migration Committee (ICMC). She is researching the psychosocial effects of climate-induced displacement in the Pacific. In 2010 Dr Loughry was made a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia for service to refugees.

David Manne is a human rights lawyer and Executive Director of Refugee Legal (previously the Refugee & Immigration Legal Centre (RILC)). He has worked in various capacities assisting refugees and asylum seekers for over 20 years. In January 2001, he joined Refugee Legal, at the forefront of defending the rights, the dignity and the lives of asylum seekers, refugees and disadvantaged migrants.

David sat on the Board of the Refugee Council of Australia for seven years, and is currently on the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture Ethics Committee, and a number of peak Government consultative bodies. He has also been appointed to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Advisory Board of Eminent Persons. He has been invited to attend and present at the UN High Commissioner's Dialogue on Protection Challenges on numerous occasions.

David has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Law Institute of Victoria Paul Baker Prize for Administrative and Human Rights Law, the Law Institute President’s Awards (2006 and 2011), was shortlisted for the Australian Human Rights Commission Human Rights Medal in 2011 and been frequently named as one of Australia’s Leading Immigration Lawyers in the Australian edition of Best Lawyers.

David headed Refugee Legal’s legal teams in successfully arguing 10 out of 10 High Court challenges, including the cases of Plaintiff M61 (regarding the Government’s ‘offshore processing’ regime in Australia); Plaintiffs M70/M106 (the ‘Malaysia Solution’ case); Plaintiff M47 (challenging security assessment and indefinite detention of a refugee); Plaintiff M76 (regarding indefinite detention of a refugee on security grounds); Plaintiff M150 (challenge by a 15 year old unaccompanied refugee in relation to the Government’s attempt to bar permanent protection through a visa cap); and Plaintiff S89 (challenging a Government regulation designed to bar boat arrivals from permanent protection).

Peter McMullin has an extensive legal and business career encompassing prominent roles in both the public and private sectors.

Peter is the current Chairman and Director of privately owned, diversified investment company McMullin Group and Special Counsel for Cornwall Stodart Lawyers, specialising in improving outcomes for the firm and its clients by facilitating meaningful connections between like-minded people.

Throughout Peter’s career, he has had a deep-seated interest in community affairs. He has consistently used his professional experience and network to further causes that he feels deeply and passionately about.

Peter’s belief is that the private sector has an important role to play in the resolution of many of our pressing social issues. He has made a significant contribution throughout his career forging positive, constructive partnerships between the private sector and governments, the not-for-profit sector and educational institutions.

Ms. O’Hara is an Irish national. She holds a law degree from Trinity College Dublin and was called to the Bar in Ireland in 1992. After two years of service with the Free Legal Advice Centres in Dublin she opted for an international career and joined UNHCR in 1994 as a United Nations Volunteer.

In 24 years with UNHCR she has served in a variety of functions and operational settings spanning a wide range of protection related responsibilities. Her postings have included: Mexico; the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Kosovo; Burundi; Sudan; the Caribbean; the United States of America; Afghanistan; Syria; Iraq and Jordan.

She took up her current assignment as Director of the Division of International Protection on 1 June 2018 following a preceding stint as Deputy Director at UNHCR’s Office in New York.

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.

Christoph Sperfeldt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. He completed his PhD 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.

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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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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Dr. Laura van Waas is a founder and Co-Director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion as well as Assistant Professor at the Department of European and International Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. Laura’s PhD manuscript, ‘Nationality Matters’ (Intersentia, 2008), is widely used as a reference for understanding international statelessness law by researchers and practitioners all over the world.

In more than a decade of working on the issue of statelessness, Laura has carried out a wide array of research and teaching projects, both within academia and for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other actors. She has worked as a consultant for UNHCR’s headquarters in Geneva as well as the regional offices in Beirut and Bangkok. She has supervised or conducted studies on statelessness for, among others, Plan International, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Open Society Foundations, the Women’s Refugee Commission, the United States Department of State, the European Parliament and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

During Laura’s visit to the Centre (from October – December 2017), she worked closely with the Centre’s Director, Michelle Foster, on the first stages in the design of a collaborative teaching project that involves developing a curriculum on statelessness as well as exploring other areas for research-related collaboration.