We are pleased to offer a very warm welcome to our Visiting Fellows for Trinity term 2024.
This term we have five Visiting Fellows:
Valentin Feneberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Public Policy and Law at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany). Previously, he was a research assistant at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and research coordinator and lecturer at the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society at Humboldt University Berlin (HU Berlin). In his PhD project at HU Berlin, he analysed the application of Country of Origin Information (COI) in asylum appeal adjudication. Valentin works in the field of socio-legal studies, focussing on asylum procedures, administrative courts, the judicial use of evidence, poverty as a reason for humanitarian protection, refugee status determination in cases of draft evasion/conscientious objection, and assisted return policies. He is co-editor of the German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies.
Alice Farmer was until January 2024 the head of UNHCR’s legal team for the United States. There, Ms. Farmer oversaw strategic litigation as well as regulatory and policy analysis. Ms. Farmer drafted UNHCR positions and represented the agency before the US Supreme Court and federal appellate courts. In recent years, Ms. Farmer was the focal point for climate change issues. In addition, Ms. Farmer oversaw a team that works to build access to counsel for asylum-seekers and provide individualized interventions. Ms. Farmer’s other service with UNHCR includes: on emergency mission as Senior Protection Officer in Moldova at the onset of the Ukrainian war; in refugee status determination in various Caribbean states, and as a protection cluster lead in Liberia. Previously, Ms. Farmer worked on refugee and human rights issues for Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Norwegian Refugee Council. Ms. Farmer has a BA from Harvard College, a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from New York University School of Law.
Jemima McKenna is currently completing her PhD in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne, focusing on the border externalisation agreements of Australia-Nauru and UK-Rwanda. Her dissertation is tentatively titled "Understanding bilateral relations between third-states and destination states within externalised asylum governance: power asymmetry and domination”. Jemima’s previous research has focused on Australian asylum policy and the construction of asylum seekers as threats within Australian political discourse. She has worked in refugee and asylum seeker advocacy for the past 5 years, with an Australian-based refugee rights NGO. She holds a Masters of International Relations and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Melbourne. Jemima recently completed a Visiting PhD Research Fellowship at the University of Bologna.
Hannah Zaruchas is a PhD student in law at Humboldt University Berlin and a research fellow at the Graduate School 'Dynamic Integration'. Her research explores contestations of admission of non-nationals in European human rights law through a critical theory lense. More specifically, she is interested in how a tension at the core of human rights law, between territorially bounded political communities and its universal subject of rights, is dissolved when dealing with admission claims of non-members. Her research interests are in European human rights and migration law, critical as well as constitutional theory. Hannah studied law at Humboldt University Berlin and King's College London and obtained a first legal state exam. Previously, she has worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Public Law and Jurisprudence at Humboldt University Berlin.
Fabricio Borges Carrijo has a PhD in International Relations from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain and is also a photographer. He is currently a PASIFIC/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre of Ethnology and Contemporary Anthropology, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, where he is conducting the project “Peace and Conflict dynamics in Refugee Shelters (PCRS)” for which he has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork in refugee shelters in Brazil and Poland. His research interests encompass the intersection between Peace and Conflict Studies and Forced Migration and Refugee Studies, especially regarding humanitarian responses, refugee shelters and the visual representation of refugees. He holds an MA in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies from the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace, University Jaume I, Spain and a BA in International Relations from the State University of São Paulo (UNESP), Brazil.
Details on the RSC’s Visiting Fellowship programme can be found here.