Intensive Course Lecturers and Presenters

2024 Lecturers and Presenters

Deirdre Brennan	Deirdre Brennan (BSc University College Cork and MA Utrecht University) completed her doctorate 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.
Fadi Chalouhy	Stateless since birth, Fadi Chalouhy endured a life of hardship and difficulties. From being denied basic human rights such as education and medical assistance, to experiencing arbitrary detention for over a decade in Lebanon. After 28 years of constant struggle, Fadi landed in Sydney in 2019, becoming the first stateless person in history to be issued a skilled shortage Visa. Currently, he is an associate manager within Accenture's Strategy & Consulting practice. He has extensive experience designing and implementing large scale transformation projects in retail, bankin, and telecommunications. Fadi supports the work of the Stateless Children Legal and is also an Advisory Council member of the Stateless Children Australia Network.
Sumedha Choudhury	Sumeha 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.
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, human rights and statelessness including International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refugeee from Deprivation (CUP, 2007), with James C. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition, (CUP, 2014) and with Hélène Lambert, International Law and the Protection of Stateless Person (OUP, 2019). Michelle teaches Refugee Law, International Refugee Law and Statelessness, Citizenship and Belonging at Melbourne Law School, and in 2017 taught in the International Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre. Michelle directs the annual Statelessness Intensive Course at Melbourne Law School. Michelle has undertaken consultancy work for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and training of refugee tribunal members in New Zealand and Australia. She is Editor in Chief (with Lauren van Waas) of the Statelessness and Citizenship Review. Michelle is also an Advisory Board Member of the Melbourne Journal of International Law and an Associate Member of the International Association of Refugee and Migration Law Judges. She is a Board member and Deputy Chair of AMES Australia.
Radha Govil	Radha Govil is Deputy Director of the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School. Until recently, 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. Prior to working at UNHCR, Radha worked as a solicitor in Australia at Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now King Wood Mallesons). She holds an LL.B. and a BA from the University of Melbourne and a Master’s in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science for which she was awarded the Lauterpacht-Higgens and Georg Schwazenberger prizes.
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.
Bronwen Manby	Bronwen is a leading authority on nationality law and statelessness in Africa. She has written on a wide range of human rights issues in Africa, with particular interests in South Africa and Nigeria (especially the oil industry in the Niger Delta), and in continental developments in human rights law. Recently, her research and writing have focused on statelessness, comparative nationality law, and legal identity, and she has worked closely with UNHCR on its global campaign against statelessness and as also advised the World Bank initiative on 'identification for development'. Bronwen has degrees from Oxford and Columbia Universities, is qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales, and in 2015 was awarded a doctorate by Maastricht University faculty of law ('Citizenship and Statelessness in Africa: The Law and Politics of Belonging'). At the Middle East Centre, Bronwen was Principal Investigator on the research project 'Preventing Statelessness among Migrants in North Africa and their Children: Role of Host and Sending States in Providing Birth Registration and Identity Documents.'
Dr Nyi Nyi Kyaw	Nyi Nyi Kyaw is Research Chair of Forced Displacement in Southeast Asia at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai Univesity. He is also an honorary fell at Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and associate at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He has published papers in peer-reviewed journals including Social Identities, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Asian Journal of Law and Society and Review of Faith & International Affairs and book chapters on citizenship, nationalism and constitutional change, among other topics, with a special focus on Myanmar.
Thomas McGee	Thomas McGee (BA Univesity 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, hew 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 Statlessness and prior to joining the Centre worked on their joint Stateless Journeys project with the Institute on Statlessness and Inclusion.
Max Walden	Max Walden is a journalist and academic who holds a PhD from Melbourne Law School. He has researched and reported on migration, refugees and statelessness in Australia and Southeast Asia for outlets including the ABC, Al Jazeera and The Age.
Bongkot Napaumporn	Bongkot Napaumporn is a PhD researcher at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Prior to joining the Centre, she worked on statelessness for UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok and 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. These laws and policies include, for example, the amended Nationality and Civil Registration Acts in 2008, and proposal for a Cabinet Decision in 2015 to provide health insurance to stateless persons. For the last 16 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. Bangkot has a keen interest in statelessness in a migratory context due to her self-evident experiences through legal advocacy provided to stateless migrants. 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.
Shahd Qannam	Shahd is a PhD candidate in Law at the City Law School, City , University of London. Her research examines the right to nationality under international law. She explores the relationship between state formation, state recognition, and statelessness. Shahd holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Human Rights and International Law from Al-Quds Bard College. She is generally interested in questions pertaining to statelessness and refugeehood, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. Shahd worked as an external legal consultant at different regional and international organisations on projects related to statelessness, and particularly Palestinian statelessness. She is also currently a programme officer at the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion.
Marika Sosnowski	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.
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 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.
Katie Robertson	Katie Robertson is a Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, focused primarily on the Centre's domestic engagement. She holds a BA/LLB (Hons) and LLM (Public International Law) from the University of Melbourne. Katie's research focuses on the legal rights of stateless children in Australia, with a particular focus on the legal and administrative barriers faced by stateless asylum seeker and refugee children in obtaining Australian citizenship. As a human rights lawyer with over ten years' experience , Katie has first-hand experience acting for stateless asylum seeker and refugee children. She is interested in examining the challenges faced by both these children and the legal practitioners assisting them, with the overall aim of improving the quality and accessibility of legal services available to stateless children in Australia. Katie balances her time at the Centre with her dual role as the Assistant Director of the Melbourne Law School Clinics and teaches in the JD Program.
Hannah Gordon	Hannah Gordon (BA and JD the University of Melbourne) 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.
Dr Jordy Silverstein	Dr Jordy Silverstein is an Honorary Fellow in SHAPS at the University of Melbourne, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. She is the author of Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning og the Twenty-First Century (Berghahn, 2015) and co-editor of Refugee Journeys: Histories of Resettlement, Representation and Resistance (ANU Press, 2021). Her research explores the history of Australian child refugee policy and policymaking processes from 1970 to the present, focusing on the ways that ideas, discourses and practices of care and control have come to be preeminent.
Dr Christoph Sperfeldt	Christoph Sperfeldt is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School. He is a Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University, an Associateof the Asia Law Centre at Melbourne Law School, and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for the Study of Humanitarian Law at the Royal University of Law and Economics, Cambodia. He was a University Fellow at Charles Darwin University and held visiting positions at the University of Copenhagen, Tilburg University, KU Leuven, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Queen's University Belfast. Since 2022, Christoph has been Visiting Professor with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, supporting human rights education and training at Cambodian universities. He holds a PhD from the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. Christoph teaches and pursues socio-legal research in areas of human rights and justice that is empirically grounded and delivers impact of relevance to both scholarly debates and applied endeavours - with a geographical focus on Southeast Asia. He has made internationally-recognised contributions to two fields of research: transitional justice and statelessness. From 2018-2021, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School and he remains affiliated with the Centre as an Honorary Fellow.
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.