Alumni

Greeting from Geneva!

It has been a few years since I came to the University of Nottingham as a visiting scholar, to work on my PhD research with the support of the Doc-Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). 

Since then, I have continued to pursue my passion for human rights and the law. In 2018, I joined Privacy International, an NGO that advocates for legal and technological solutions to protect people and their data from exploitation by governments and companies. I currently lead the strategic area at Privacy International that challenges government surveillance overreach and demands state accountability.I am also responsible for some of Privacy International's litigation and interventions, before national and international courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights.

My experience at Privacy International has been incredibly rewarding, and I am proud to be a part of an organization that fights to make a difference in the world.

Before working with Privacy International, I was a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, leading on their research on human rights in the digital age.  

I am forever grateful for the HRLC’s support and for the foundation it provided during my time as a visiting scholar.  I even managed to turn my thesis into a book entitled, "Serious Violations of Human Rights: On the Emergence of a New Special Regime", which was published by OUP in 2022. 

I hope to be able to visit again soon!

Hello from Vancouver, Canada!

It has been four years since I finished up at Nottingham and I've recently begun working as the intake coordinator for Community Legal Assistance Society (CLAS). Our organisation was founded in 1971 as the first community law office assisting low-income individuals in the province of British Columbia. Since then, we have helped thousands of people with direct services and have conducted hundreds of test cases at all levels of court.

The organisation's recent work includes lobbying on behalf of vulnerable tenants in the city of Vancouver, intervening in a human rights complaint concerning workplace discrimination at the Supreme Court of Canada, the repeal of discriminatory income assistance policies and challenging the validity of forced psychiatric treatments under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In my role, I help people with legal issues surrounding their housing, income security, employment, mental health and human rights. I'm privileged to work with a network of inspirational advocates across the province who assist low-income individuals facing homelessness, gender-based discrimination, and other poverty law problems. I also sit on the City of Vancouver's Renters Advisory Committee, where I am able to advise the city council on issues relating to low-income renters.

In addition to my work with CLAS, I work as an advocate with North Shore Crisis Services and volunteer in a legal clinic run by Battered Women's Support Services. Both organisations provide crucial services and support for women facing violence and poverty.

My LLM dissertation focused on housing insecurity and its effects on minority women in Canada, and I feel privileged to be doing work that is a direct extension of my studies. My first four years since graduation have been tremendously rewarding and I look forward to the opportunities ahead.

Greetings from Durham, where I recently began work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Law School. My role involves teaching (that's clear from the title!) and also researching and writing a PhD. I'm very excited to be doing my PhD in the field of economic and social rights. My focus is the appropriate use of resources in realising these rights and a large part of the work will centre around the prohibition on retrogressive measures doctrine.

Over the next months I will be beginning case study research with stakeholders. The research is intended to feed into, and inform, the debates that currently surround austerity and human rights. I also have smaller research projects ongoing on foodbanks in the UK and the implications for the right to food, and on the regulation of sexist music. I'm looking forward to giving papers in both these areas in the near future.

Part of my interest in economic and social rights is their applicability to the 'real world', so it has been great to work with a small NGO called Restless Beings. The organisation has a specific focus on international human rights and the relationship has been so productive that I intend to build similar connections in the future.

It certainly seems like a good time to be an ESR lawyer, with communities and initiatives developing across the country. As a Twitter fan (@btcwarwick) it has also been excellent to see human rights academics and advocates from across the world connect in the ether. It's great that the ESR Unit can continue these positive trends.

Warm greetings from Prishtinë/Priština!

Do you sometimes feel like you blink and an entire year goes by? As I’m writing this I’m realizing it has been nearly six years since I’ve finished my LLM in Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham. Better still, more than a decade has passed since I first came to the city of Robin Hood, the Tram and Annie’s Burger Shack to start an LLB in Law.

After leaving Nottingham, I first headed off a few miles further North to Sheffield for a postgraduate diploma in Politics and to earn a modest living as a freelance interpreter. A year later, I was on a plane to start an internship with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo… and I’ve remained here since, barring a quick intermezzo as a trainee with the European Commission in Prague. No longer a fresh-faced intern, I’m now a grizzled veteran with a fancy title of a Senior Communities Adviser.

I got the chance to meld the three thematic areas I enjoyed the most during the LLM – minority rights, migration issues, and social and economic rights. Nowadays, I’m working mostly on issues affecting some of the most vulnerable communities in Kosovo: the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians. We have recently published a comprehensive overview of their situation, and now we are starting an internship scheme for university students and graduates from these three communities. By assigning interns to government institutions and providing them with training, we are hoping to enable them to obtain civil service jobs befitting their education and to show younger members of their communities that education can lead to tangible results.

My biggest achievement, however, came when I co-ordinated the Mission’s response to an imminent humanitarian catastrophe at a social housing building in a village called Plemetina/Plemetin, in Obiliq/Obilić municipality. A fire incident and strong winds had destroyed the roof of the object, leaving the impoverished Roma and Ashkali residents, including many children, exposed to the elements, with winter just around the corner. Together with several partners, we managed to have a new roof installed before the snow and frost arrived in full form.

Human rights, and especially the socio-economic rights of marginalized groups, remain a key focus of my professional endeavours. Lately, I have been toying with the idea of returning to the academic world to pursue a PhD on some of the issues I have engaged with in my career as a practitioner. Now, let’s see how that works out – I’ll certainly keep you posted!