Matrix Chambers

Cathryn is a leading scholar of international refugee and migration law, with expertise in public, public international and EU law. She also explores the relationship between migration and labour law in her academic and practical work.  She is currently Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin.  She was called to the Irish Bar in 2001, and since then has pursued a mainly academic career in Dublin, Oxford and Berlin.

Her previous roles include Professor of Fundamental Rights and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School (2020 – 2023) and Andrew W Mellon Professor of International Refugee and Migration Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (2013-2023). She was the Principal Investigator of RefMig, a five-year ERC-funded research project exploring refugee mobility, recognition and rights (2018-2023), and now runs the Volkswagen Foundation funded AFAR (Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) project, exploring the role of automated decision-making in the governance of migration and asylum (2021-2025). She has also undertaken research and advisory work for UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, and provided expert input in litigation on refugee protection globally.

She is the author of The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law (OUP 2015), and is currently completing a monograph examining refugee recognition practices globally, as well as a short critical introduction to international refugee law.  She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (OUP 2021) and Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (co-editor Mark Freedland) (OUP 2014), a ground-breaking work on the impact of immigration law and status in labour relations. Her most recent collaborative volume was IOM Unbound: Obligations and Accountability of the International Organisation for Migration in an Era of Expansion (co-editors Megan Bradley & Angela Sherwood) (Cambridge University Press, June 2022), examining legal and political accountability of this IO across its diverse areas of activity.

She is an experienced and effective public speaker and moderator, and frequently contributes to policy processes and public debates on asylum and migration.