Postgraduate Research Student

Email: s.r.singer@qmul.ac.uk

Thesis title:

‘Exclusion from Refugee Status: asylum seekers and terrorism in the UK’

Supervisors:

Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice and Dr Prakash Shah

Biography:

Sarah graduated with first class honours from the LLB at Queen Mary, University of London in 2008, and was awarded the Sweet and Maxwell Law Prize and the Drapers Company Undergraduate Prize. She went on to complete an LLM in International Human Rights Law at University College London, which she passed with distinction. She was the sole recipient of the Mishcon de Reya Scholarship, and also received substantial grants from the Haberdasher’s Thomas Arno Fund and the Jewish Student Aid Trust.

Sarah is currently a law PhD Candidate at Queen Mary, having been awarded the School of Law PhD Studentship. She is also a Graduate Student Advisor in the Department of Law, and the Managing Editor of the International Community Law Review.

Sarah was recently awarded best paper at the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights (CCJHR) Conference at University College Cork, Ireland, and her paper will shortly be published by the CCJHR.

Research:

Sarah's research interests are in refugee law and policy, human rights and migration. Her current research focuses on the exclusion of suspected terrorists from refugee status in the UK. She is examining the UK’s interpretation of Article 1F, the ‘exclusion clause’ of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and assessing the compatibility of this interpretation with the UK’s obligations under the 1951 Convention and other international human rights instruments. Sarah hopes that, by focusing specifically on the UK context, her research will provide a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in the modern age of terrorism, risk and insecurity.