Staff
Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE: Co-Director
Barbara is a legal anthropologist. From 1982-96, she founded/directed the Centre for Refugee Studies, University of Oxford. From 1997-2000 she conducted research in Uganda and Kenya where she began the Refugee Law Project, Uganda. In 2000-2008 she was in Cairo where she helped begin the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, at the American University where she also taught and also founded a legal aid for refugees in Cairo which has become the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA).
Themba Lewis: Co-Director, Newsletter Founding Editor
Themba holds graduate degrees in refugee studies from the University of Oxford and the American University in Cairo, and Level 2 Senior Caseworker Accreditation with the UK Legal Services Commission. He has taught on refugee rights in Bulgaria and Egypt, provided legal representation for detained asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, and is a Registered Member of the Law Society of England and Wales. Most recently, Themba served as a Field Team Leader at the US Refugee Admissions Program Resettlement Support Center, before joining the Fahamu Refugee Programme as co-director in August 2012.
Martin Jones: Director, Research and Training
Martin is a lawyer and specialist on refugee law. He practiced refugee law in Canada and has taught at the Centre for Refugee Studies (Canada), the University of East London (UK), the University of Michigan (USA), the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). He has provided training to legal aid NGOs in Egypt, Hong Kong, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey. With Dr. Harrell-Bond, he implements the Asia Legal Aid training programme funded by USIP, the programme funded by the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on contemporary forms of Slavery for training in Egypt and Turkey, and is a Resource person for www.frlan.org.
Victoria Goodban: Secretary, SRLA Network, and List-serv Moderator
Vicky joined the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network in January 2010 after completing an LLM in international humanitarian and refugee law at Nottingham University. She has previous experience working for a national charity in London in a marketing and communications capacity and has undertaken voluntary work in the UK with the Rift Valley Institute (London) and overseas for NGOs in India (Development in Action) and Madagascar (Azafady). She has now taken up the position of Gender and Refugee Project Officer with Oxfam Cymru/Wales and continues to moderate the list-serv and serve as Secretary for the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network.
Advisers
Guglielmo Verdirame
Professor Guglielmo Verdirame holds a degree in Law from the University of Bologna, a PhD from the London School of Economics and is Professor of International Law at the Department of War Studies and the School of Law at King's College London. Before taking this position, he was a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. His main areas of research and teaching are public international law, and legal and political philosophy. His publications include: Rights in Exile:Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, co-authored with Barbara Harrell-Bond (Berghahn Books, 2005), and The UN and Human Rights: Who Guards the Guardians? (Cambridge University Press, 2011). He practises as a Barrister from 20 Essex Street Chambers. He is a trustee of two charities involved in the advancement of human rights through law: the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance, and the Human Dignity Trust.
Richard Carver
Richard Carver is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and Governance at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice, Oxford Brookes University. Previously an associate of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, he has been on the research staff of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and ARTICLE 19. An early proponent of understanding refugee law in the context of human rights, he was the author, with Chaloka Beyani and Joe Oloka-Onyango, of African Exodus(1995), the first study of protection and human rights of refugees in Africa, as well as Voices in Exile (2001), a study of African refugees’ right to freedom of expression, with Professor Guglielmo Verdirame. Richard teaches on human rights and refugee protection. As an international law scholar, his focus is on mechanisms for implementing international standards at the national level and he is currently researching the role of national human rights institutions in protecting the rights of refugees.
Merrill Smith
Merrill Smith holds a B.A. from Columbia, a J.D. from Vanderbilt, an LL.M. from NYU, and the Diplome from the International Institute of Human Rights and is admitted to practice in the State of NY. He was the editor of the annual World Refugee Survey, (editions 2003-9), with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), and an active leader in the international civil society advocacy movement to end the human "warehousing" of refugees. He was the Washington Representative of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (2000-2), a leading lobbyist for increased appropriations to the U.S. Migration and Refugee Assistance account and for the establishment of Legal Orientation Presentations for immigration detainees. He also directed Church World Service's legal department representing Haitian asylum seekers from Guantanamo in Miami, worked as human rights observer for the UN in Haiti, and directed Haiti Advocacy in the United States. Merrill advises the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network on international refugee protection and advocacy.
Editors, Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter
Themba Lewis, 2010-Present (Founding editor)
See listing above.
Yara Romariz Maasri, 2010-Present
Yara holds a First Class Honours MA in English with Linguistics from the University of St Andrews, Scotland and an MSc in Forced Migration from the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Her editing experience includes work for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy, as well as consultancies with the US Refugee Admissions Program Resettlement Support Center (RSC) in Beirut, Lebanon, where she was also a staff member for over three years. She is currently a Resettlement Officer at RSC Africa's Regional Deployment Unit, being deployed to UNHCR offices throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to conduct resettlement interviews and write referrals.
Lily Parrott, 2012-Present
Lily completed an undergraduate degree in Philosophy & Psychology at the University of St Andrews and will begin an MSC in Migration, Mobility & Development at SOAS this autumn. She took a break between degrees, spending time as an inner city youth worker and teacher for autistic children in Glasgow. She has interned with Barnardos Scotland, Mary's Meals, and Rural Women Development Association in Tanzania. She returned form India shortly before starting with the Fahamu Refugee Programme. Lily hopes to work in South America or Africa in refugee assistance or human trafficking.
Katie Vasey, 2012-Present
Katie holds a PhD from The University of Melbourne in Australia exploring emotional wellbeing and belonging of Iraqi refugee women who resettled in rural Australia. Katie also completed a Graduate Diploma in Public Health (Tropical Health) from the University of Queensland, Australia and a BA(Hons) in Social Anthropology and Development Studies from the University of Sussex in England. She is a Research Fellow in the Social Science and Health Research unit at Monash University in Australia. Her current research explores the interrelationship between immigration, parenthood and identity with Iraqi and Cambodian women in Australia. She has published a monograph, and in national and international journals and edited books.
Stuart Thomas, 2012-Present
Stuart holds an MA Development Studies with Distinction, and BSc Psychology First Class. He has worked with refugees in Egypt and IDPs in Colombia and has further expereince within international development. Currently he carries out research and analyses for the public sector in the UK.
Jennie Corbett, 2013-Present
Jennie is currently studying for an MSc in Migration and Development at SOAS. She also volunteers for the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum in London and has a professional background in education and development co-operation.
Previous editors
Nora Danielson, 2010-2012 (Founding editor)
Nora is a DPhil Candidate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford. She earned an MPhil (Distinction) in Migration Studies, University of Oxford. Her current research is on refugees, refugee assistance and social change in the context of the aftermath of the 2005 refugee protest in Cairo, Egypt.
Sara Gonzalez Devant, 2011
Sara is a freelance researcher. She holds an MSc (Distinction) in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford. She has published on conflict induced displacement in Timor-Leste, and has conducted consultancy work for UNHCR. In 2009-10 she was a Sauvé Scholar in Montréal, Canada. More recently, she has worked on the theme of the intergenerational transmission of poverty for the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK.
Resource People
Katia Bianchini
Eddie Bruce-Jones
Cairo Communtiy Interpreter Project
Heaven Crawley
Marisa O. Ensor
Aryah Somers
Maryellen Fullerton
Anna Marie Gallagher
Micheal Gallagher
Martin Jones
Jean La Fontaine
Maria Sian Lew
Leslie Miller
Grant Mitchell
Elna Sondergaard
Michael Kagan
Gayla Ruffer
Frances Webber