Our members

Adrian Berry is a Barrister at Garden Court Chambers and on the Executive Committee of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA). He was a member of the Advisory Panel for the UNHCR/Asylum Aid study Mapping Statelessness in the UK. Adrian has an extensive practice in British nationality law, both in relation to historic Commonwealth based claims and contemporary issues concerning automatic acquisition of citizenship, naturalisation and registration, as well as loss of nationality. He has contributed to all parts of Fransman's British Nationality Law (3rd edition 2011), contributed the nationality law chapters to the JCWI Handbook 2006, contributed to Jackson and Warr's Immigration Law and Practice (2008) on the Right of Abode, and contributed the nationality law chapters to the Blackstone's Guide to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 (OUP 2010). He has also contributed to responses to government consultation papers and advised peers in the House of Lords for ILPA. He was a member of the group of nationality law experts reviewing the draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the right to Nationality and the Prevention and Prohibition of Statelessness in Africa, and he was also a member of the Home Office Earned Citizenship Strategic Advisory Group.

Ahmad Jaber, alias Ahmad Benswait, is a stateless researcher in the United Kingdom. He is originally from a minority indigenous to the lands of Kuwait but excluded from the right to Kuwaiti nationality since the country’s independence from Britain. Benswait’s research is informed by his lived experiences of statelessness, including being arbitrarily classed ‘illegal (Bidoon) resident’ in what has always been his homeland, the deprivation of basic human rights and forced migration.

Dr Aija Lulle is a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK. She was the founderdirector of the Centre for Diaspora and Migration Research, University of Latvia (2014-2015). She is an experienced researcher and consultant, and her expertise ranges from citizenship and kinship issues in the context of borders to diaspora. Her current interests are related to youth mobilities, ageing and migration as well as lives of transnational families, especially through broader notion of identities because of intra-European migration.

The AIRE Centre is an NGO whose mission is to promote awareness of European law rights and assist marginalised individuals and those in vulnerable circumstances to assert those rights.  We have two main activities: litigating cases before the European Court of Human Rights (as applicants’ representatives or as third-party interveners) and providing free legal advice to individuals and other advisers and lawyers, mainly on EU migration law.  We also carry out trainings and projects.  Our current focus areas include women’s rights, the rights of victims of human trafficking and of survivors of domestic violence and above all migrants’ rights.

Alison Harvey is a non-practising barrister and holds a Masters in human rights and civil liberties law. She was the Legal Director of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) in the UK. She has specialised in immigration, asylum and nationality law since the mid-1990s, representing individuals and working on policy and legislation, in the UK and internationally. Alison conducts regular training and has published widely on immigration, asylum and nationality law, including statelessness, for example “The UK's new statelessness determination procedure in context” JIANL 2013, 27(4), 294-314. Alison is on the editorial board of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law and is a peer reviewer for several journals. She is a contributor to Fransman’s British Nationality Law and one of the two UK contacts for the European Legal Network on Asylum.

Asylum Aid has been representing refugees through the UK asylum process for thirty years as well as advocating on behalf of asylum seekers for a better, fairer process in the UK. We are now part of the Helen Bamber group, a charity that specialises in providing care and support for torture survivors.

Asylum Aid has had a specialist focus on Statelessness for the past fifteen years and campaigned alongside ENS for the UK Statelessness process to be created. We have continued to represent statelessness applicants through this process and hope to campaign for legal aid funding in the future.

Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) is a leading NGO that focuses on investigating human rights abuses in Bahrain. We work in three stages: exposing, supporting victims, and seeking accountability. We have developed a unique yet incredibly effective strategy of lobbying, peaceful protests, the media and creative use of the legal process. As a result, a week barely passes without the human rights abuses of the small state of Bahrain appearing in the news. Through our campaigning, we have drawn attention to the Bahraini government’s use of the revocation of citizenship as a tool to silence dissent. Our Director of Advocacy, Sayed Alwadaei, is a prominent Bahraini human rights defender who was rendered stateless in 2015 as a reprisal for his human rights work. With his exceptional experience and knowledge of the abuses in Bahrain, we are working on a research and advocacy project relating to the activities of Bahraini stateless people in Europe after they have had their citizenship revoked.

BID is an independent, national charity that exists to challenge immigration detention in the UK. We provide legal advice, information and representation on bail to people held in immigration detention and we aim to influence policy to ensure that people are only detained as a last resort and that such safeguards as exist against arbitrary detention are adhered to. We run a telephone helpline, disseminate a self-help book (How to Get out of Detention, available in 5 languages) and run bail workshops in detention centres. We also prepare and present in court a limited number of bail applications for the most vulnerable of people (e.g.  survivors of torture and parents separated from their children) and people who cannot be removed from the UK. We have a strategic approach to litigation and refer cases of unlawful detention for High Court action.

Before starting a Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh, I took an M.A. in International Studies at Seoul National University, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Business Studies at the University of Mannheim. In 2012, I was an exchange student at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. Since 2019, I've been a co-chair of the “Normative Theory of Immigration Working Group” which is an international collective of scholars working at the intersections of migration studies, policy studies, and political theory. Moreover,

The Bhutanese Welfare Association (BWA) is a non-profit organisation established on 27th July 2011. It was established by a group of Bhutanese people within the UK to bring all Bhutanese together to nurture, facilitate, empower and promote Bhutan’s culture, and to aid the population in the development of the skills that are essential for establishing a new life in the United Kingdom. The mission of BWA is to ensure the development of support services that will enable the Bhutanese people to improve their standard of living and increase their self-worth, independence, and autonomy.
BWA’s methods for facilitating the growth of Bhutanese culture, social integration and personal development of individuals includes various activities, programs and guidance. It is an invaluable resource for all Bhutanese to discover their strength and potential to thrive at the start of a new life in a new country, by successfully adjusting to English culture while also retaining their own traditions.