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Lamis Abdelaaty, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies for the political science department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences, is a co-principal investigator on a project that has received a $2 million grant from the European Research Council to study the effectiveness of international refugee law.

The research team for the project titled “RefLex: Is International Refugee Law Effective?” includes principal investigator Cathryn Costello, a professor of global refugee and migration law at University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law, and fellow co-principal investigator Ashwini Vasanthakumar, an associate professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy at Queen’s University Law School in Canada. The research team will also include two post-doctoral researchers and two Ph.D. students.

The team will use statistical analysis, qualitative methods, case studies and conceptual analysis for their comparative study. They hope to create a new dataset—the Refugee Protection Index—to explore the effectiveness of international refugee law in terms of delivering protection for refugees, changing states’ behavior and motivating social, political or legal mobilizations by refugees themselves.

“Whether and how international refugee law can be effective are pressing questions for scholars of international refugee politics,” says Abdelaaty. “I am looking forward to collaborating with this stellar research team and to extending my previous work on refugee rights and policies through this project.”

The funding is a consolidator grant, which supports scientists and scholars with seven to 12 years of experience as they establish independent research teams. The European Research Council, a public body that funds scientific and technological research, awarded over $700 million to 328 researchers across Europe under the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.

“This project will answer important questions about what types of laws can protect some of the most vulnerable people—refugees,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research and professor of political science. “During a time of significant change to the international community, Professor Abdelaaty is helping to illuminate where refugees are safe, integrated and adding to their new home countries.”

Previously, Abdelaaty has received support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for her second book project, “Refugees in Crisis,” which analyzes the designation of situations as “refugee crises.” Her first book, “Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees” (Oxford University Press, 2021), received the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association’s Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Studies section and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Migration and Citizenship section.

At the Maxwell School, Abdelaaty is a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. She teaches courses on refugees in international politics, humanitarian action in world politics, international law and human rights.

Story by Michael Kelly