Our members

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.

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,

Cecilia Manzotti is a PhD researcher at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology of the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the determination of the nationality status of asylum seekers and refugees, including their possible statelessness, in Europe. Previously, she worked in refugee status determination, first as a legal advisor with Africa and Middle Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo, and later as a decision-maker with UNHCR in Egypt, Turkey and Italy. Cecilia also worked in wider refugee protection, and more recently served as a consultant with UNHCR in Guinea, focusing on statelessness. Moreover, she conducted research on migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons with UNODC and contributed to UNODC publications on these topics.

The Liverpool Law Clinic is part of the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool. The Clinic provides a free legal service. Third year law students work on immigration and asylum cases, including the cases of stateless people, under the extremely close supervision of qualified lawyers who are specialists in the field. Staff at the Law Clinic started this work in 2013 and now contribute to policy initiatives at national and international level.