Teaching Team

Azizbek Ashurov is a human rights lawyer with 20 years of expertise in matters of statelessness, asylum, legal identity, and migration. He is a founding member and Director of Ferghana Valley Lawyers Without Borders based in Kyrgyzstan. Azizbek is the coordinator of the Central Asian Network on Statelessness (CANS) which consists of 17 NGOs and institutions from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The network works collectively to promote nationality rights and inclusion and achieve its common goals in preventing and reducing statelessness.In 2019, Azizbek Ashurov won the prestigious UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award for his work in supporting the efforts of the Kyrgyz Republic in becoming the first country in the world to end all known cases of statelessness  Leading the countrywide campaign, he has helped over 13,700 people, including more than 2,000 children, to gain Kyrgyz nationality after they became stateless following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Samantha Balaton-Chrimes is an Associate Professor in Politics at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia). Sam has worked on statelessness since 2009 when she conducted doctoral research in Kenya. Since then, she has conducted research on various ways in which statelessness is produced by combinations of bureaucracy and discrimination. She investigates the practical avenues for remedying statelessness and the underlying marginalisation that causes it. In her work, Sam investigates the fine-grained mechanics of identity cards, population registers, birth registration, nationality and statelessness determination procedures to see how bureaucracy gives effect – or not – to legal protections. Sam’s 2026 book Knowing Ethnicity: The Politics of Classification and Pluralism in Kenya (Cambridge University Press) straddles both these areas of research into statelessness and its root causes.

Ishika Chatterjee is a PhD candidate and Research Assistant at the Melbourne Law School’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. She holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Anthropology and Sociology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Prior to commencing her PhD, she worked as a Protection Officer at UNRWA (the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) in Amman, Jordan, focussing on international refugee protection and advocacy. Ishika’s doctoral research examines state violence, displacement, and contested citizenship in India’s eastern borderland regions.

Hannah Gordon is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Hannah has worked in the statelessness sector since 2019, first in research at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and later as part of regional NGO, Nationality for All. In her time with Nationality for All, Hannah was Lead Researcher on the Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific (SEAP) and advised on the formation of the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition (SDCC) a regional coalition of affected persons, NGOs and individuals working towards addressing statelessness in the Asia Pacific. Hannah is an admitted lawyer, and her research seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice. She is strongly influenced by her experiences working with persons affected by statelessness across the Asia Pacific and her thesis focuses on the current approaches to addressing statelessness in the region.

Radha Govil is Deputy Director of the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School. Previously, she was a Senior Legal Officer 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 many of UNHCR's key doctrinal and policy positions on statelessness, including in relation to the definition of a stateless person under international law, particular standards in the 1961 Convention, as well as conceiving the #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness and its implementation framework. Radha advises Governments, UNHCR operations and partner organisations around the world on how to prevent and reduce statelessness, and has developed a number of policy and practical tools to support them in this effort.

Neha Gurung is a human rights lawyer, researcher, and co-founder of the Citizenship Affected People's Network (CAPN), a national non-governmental organization dedicated to advancing equal citizenship rights in Nepal. With a Master's in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the American University Washington College of Law, she currently serves as Deputy Director and Director of Legal Aid and Research at CAPN, and is engaged in multiple research projects related to statelessness. She has also served as a co-lead for the Global Movement Against Statelessness in 2023 and is a founding member of the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition-Asia Pacific.

Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel  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.

Professor Susan Kneebone researches in the area of international migration, nationality and citizenship law, including refugees, statelessness, human trafficking, marriage migration and migrant workers, with particular reference to South East Asia. She has published widely in international journals including the Journal of Refugee Studies, the International Journal of Refugee Law, and the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law.

She was appointed a Professorial Fellow and Associate, Asian Law Centre at Melbourne Law School in March 2015. Prior to that she was a Professor in the Faculty of Law, Monash University. She has held visiting appointments at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University; the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore; Refugee Law Initiative, University of London and Centre for International Migration Studies, University of Montreal.

Bongkot Napaumporn is a PhD researcher at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Prior to joining the Centre, she worked on statelessness for UNHCR in Bangkok and was an advocate at Thammasat University’s legal clinic, working closely with civil societies and communities of stateless and displaced persons in Thailand. She has been involved in key law and policy reforms in Thailand aimed at improving stateless people’s legal status and access to human rights, promoting their well-being and inclusion in society.

Bongkot has a keen interest in statelessness in a migratory context. Her current research focuses on human agency of stateless migrants from Thailand in Japan and analyses how their situations have a direct and indirect impact on state policies and relations relating to addressing statelessness.

Dr. Shahd Qannam holds a PhD in Law from City, University of London and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. Shahd is a legal and human rights practitioner specialising in the right to nationality and issues of statelessness. Her expertise spans international human rights law, international humanitarian law, statelessness law, and refugee law.

She currently works at the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI). Prior to joining ISI, Shahd worked as a legal consultant at different regional and international organisations, working on projects related to refugeehood, statelessness, and citizenship issues, with a particular focus on the context of Palestine.

Dr Jade Roberts is a Lecturer at the Melbourne Law School and a Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Her doctoral thesis, Beyond the State: Approaches to Statelessness in International Law, examined the problem of statelessness and how it can be solved through international law, revealing why the current approach is unlikely to succeed and identifying five alternative approaches. She has expertise in statelessness, refugee law, human rights law, migration law and public international law.

Prior to joining Melbourne Law School, Jade worked 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. She is the Managing Editor of the Statelessness & Citizenship Review.

Katie Robertson is the Associate Director at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, focused primarily on the Centre’s domestic engagement. She is also a practicing lawyer and Director of the Stateless Legal Clinic, which she established in 2021. Katie’s research, policy and engagement work focuses primarily on the legal rights of stateless children and adults in Australia.

As a human rights lawyer with over ten years of experience internationally and in Australia, Katie is interested in examining the challenges faced by both stateless persons and the legal practitioners assisting them, with the overall aim of improving the quality and accessibility of legal services available to stateless people throughout Australia.

Katie is also Assistant Director of the Melbourne Law School Clinics and teaches in the JD Program, where she focuses on training future lawyers through practical skill development and experiential learning.

In 2022, Katie was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate best practice models for providing legal education and aid to stateless children. She is is Co-Chair and co-founder of the Stateless Children Australia Network.

Amit Sen works at UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP) on the prevention and reduction of statelessness. He previously served as UNHCR’s Senior Regional Protection Officer for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where he coordinated protection from gender-based violence (GBV), child rights violations and statelessness in conflict-affected States such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, among others.

Prior to joining UNHCR, Amit served as a Senior Associate in the federal Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) in the U.S. Department of Justice. He has worked in judicial chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the D.C. Court of Appeals, and has also provided pro bono legal representation to asylum-seekers and their families.

Dr Marika Sosnowski is an admitted lawyer and associate researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. In May 2023, she joined the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness as a Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow. Her primary research interests are in the fields of critical security studies, complex political order, local/rebel governance and legal systems, with a particular focus on the Syrian civil war.

Dr Christoph Sperfeldt is Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University and Honorary Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Christoph is also a Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University, an Associate of the Asia Law Centre at Melbourne Law School, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law at the Royal University of Law and Economics, Cambodia.

Christoph pursues socio-legal research in areas of human rights and justice, including statelessness and legal identity, international and regional human rights protection, and transitional and international criminal justice.  Christoph’s interest in statelessness and legal identity arose from multi-year field research among the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia.

Hafsar Tameesuddin is the co-secretary general of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, a social worker, human rights defender and Rohingya activist. She  advocates for the rights of refugees, statelessness, gender equality, prevention and response to SGBV and ending child marriages with more than 15 years of experience working with refugee communities, INGOS and NGOS and served as an interim Advisory member of the UNHCR Advisory Group. They are an advisory member of the Global Movement of Statelessness, board member at Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, and member of the Board for Azadi Project. Their expertise includes understanding the ground realities of challenges faced by refugees, statelessness and asylum seekers as someone with lived experience. She is a passionate advocate for the power shift, inclusion and diversity within the systems.

Haseenah Huurieyah is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre of Statelessness (PMCS), where her doctoral research focuses on the statelessness of sea nomadic communities in Southeast Asia.

She studied law in Malaysia and holds a Master’s degree in Peace Studies from Hacettepe University in Ankara, Türkiye. Her MA thesis led to a book chapter published by Springer International Publishing titled The Forsaken War in Yemen: R2P as Mere Rhetoric?.

Called to the bar in January 2021, Huurieyah worked at LexisNexis as a legal editor and led RELX CARES (CSR) and rule of law projects (ROL) for stateless and refugee communities. The ROL projects focused on facilitating birth registration for stateless individuals, creating practice guides for Sabah Law Society lawyers as part of Mobile Court expedition, and producing legal literacy videos to address low literacy rates. Her current research on sea nomadic communities is inspired by her work for Persatuan Pendidikan Bajau Laut, an NGO providing education to stateless Bajau Laut children in Sabah, Malaysia.

Aashish Yadav is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School. His doctoral research examines the nationality concerns that emerge during protracted or permanent displacement in the context of climate change. Aashish joined MLS in 2025 after working for five years on citizenship deprivation and statelessness in India with a focus on Assam. During this time, he was based at Jindal Global Law School in India as an Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Centre for Public Interest Law. He taught international law, human rights, and citizenship, including a legal clinic on statelessness in India. His academic work has been published in Statelessness and Citizenship Review and Jindal Global Law Review. His public commentary has appeared in The Indian Express, Scroll.in, and Article-14. Aashish is also a guest lecturer at The University of Edinburgh and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition – Asia Pacific. He has held visiting positions at Université Catholique de Lille, France and Universitas Sumatera Utara, Indonesia. Aashish studied LLM at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and LLB and BA (Honours) English Literature at the University of Delhi.