The REF-ARAB Project - Team - Dallal Stevens
Dallal Stevens is Professor of Refugee Law at the University of Warwick. Her research interests focus on refugee and asylum law and policy in the UK, EU and Middle East and she has published widely. Monographs include: States, the Law and Access to Refugee Protection: Fortresses and Fairness (ed, with Maria O’Sullivan, Hart 2017), Refugee Protection and the Role of Law: Conflicting Identities (ed, with Susan Kneebone and Loretta Baldassar, Routledge, 2014,) and UK Asylum Law and Policy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Sweet & Maxwell, 2004). Dallal’s work has been supported by external grants from The Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, and the ESRC. She is Book Review Editor with the International Journal of Refugee Law and Associate Editor of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law.
On REF-ARAB, Dallal will address the contemporary provision of protection of refugees by UNHCR, with a particular focus on two key states: Lebanon and Jordan. Adopting a socio-legal perspective, and with the use of fieldwork, Dallal will explore the changing interrelationships between UNHCR, state and refugee. A major focus will be to understand both intended and unintended consequences of the UNHCR-state-refugee interactions, with the team seeking to provide important insights that can improve regional and global refugee policy. Key research questions include:
(i) What is the legal relationship between UNHCR and the state? How has that relationship developed and how is it managed?
(ii) What does international protection mean in each country?
(iii) Is UNHCR negotiating protection or humanitarian space and, if so, how does this develop and what does it entail?
(iv) What is the connection between human rights, aid, assistance and protection?
(v) How do ‘alternative protection strategies’ articulate and safeguard international protection in policy as well as in practice?