Graduate Researchers
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.
Sumedha Choudhury
Sumedha Choudhury is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and a member of the Institute of International Law and the Humanities (IILAH). Sumedha’s doctoral thesis focuses on the issue of statelessness in the context of postcolonial states (with a primary focus on India). She has previously worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), India in the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) Unit.
Sumedha holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford and an LLM with a specialisation in International Law from South Asian University.
Andrea Immanuel
Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel (B.A.B.L. (Honours) School of Excellence in Law, The Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University and LLM Utrecht University) is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Her research project is on nationality and statelessness in armed conflict.
Before joining the Centre, Andrea was an Assistant Professor of Legal Practice at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), O.P. Jindal Global University, India. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for International Legal Studies, JGLS and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Public Interest Law, JGLS. In JGLS, she researched widely on nationality and statelessness in South Asia. Andrea has also worked as a Refugee Status Determination (RSD) Assistant and Protection Associate in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), India..
Thomas McGee
Thomas McGee (BA University of Cambridge and MA University of Exeter) is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. His research project focuses on Syria’s changing statelessness landscape since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011. Alongside this, he has worked with the centre in Lebanon on a project about “Nomadic Peoples and Statelessness”. Thomas is an Associate member of the European Network on Statelessness and prior to joining the centre worked on their joint Stateless Journeys project with the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. His academic work on statelessness has appeared in the Tilburg Law Review, Statelessness Working Papers Series and the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration. At the same time, he has contributed to a number of Country of Origin Information reports on Syria and served as a country expert for immigration appeal cases relating to stateless Kurds from Syria. Speaking Arabic and Kurdish, Thomas has worked for a decade as an analyst and advisor on humanitarian and development programmes implemented in Syria and with UNHCR in Iraq. He has also engaged on wider human rights and social justice issues, including research on Housing, Land and Property violations in northern Syria, and co-editing a journal special issue on “Genocide and the Kurds”.
Bongkot Napaumporn
Bongkot Napaumporn is a graduate researcher with the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Prior to this she worked at the UNHCR's Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. For the last 15 years, her work has been dedicated to the prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons who mostly are in protracted situations in South-East Asia. Before joining UNHCR, she was an advocate at the Thammasat University’s legal clinic that worked closely with civil societies and communities of stateless and displaced persons in Thailand. She was involved in key law and policy reforms of Thailand which aimed at improving stateless people’s legal status and access to human rights and promoting their well-being and inclusion in the society. Her areas of expertise include statelessness and nationality, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, human rights, and forced migration.
Jade Roberts
Jade Roberts is a PhD Candidate and a Teaching Fellow at the Melbourne Law School and co-Managing Editor of the Statelessness and Citizenship Review. Her doctoral research examines alternative approaches to understanding and addressing statelessness in international law. She has previously worked as a Research Associate at Melbourne Law School, and in research roles with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Global Migration Centre in Geneva. Jade is a lawyer and has worked on human rights and refugee cases with Shine Lawyers and The Humanitarian Group. She has a Master’s in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.