Cathryn Costello

Cathryn Costello is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law.

Her main affiliation is at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, where she is Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law. She was formerly Professor of Fundamental Rights and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School (2020 – 2023),  Andrew W Mellon Professor of International Refugee and Migration Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (2013-2023), Francis Reynolds  Fellow & Tutor in EU and Public Law, Worcester College,Oxford (2003-2013), as well as holding various roles at Trinity College Dublin.

 She is a leading scholar of international and European refugee and migration law and also explores the relationship between migration and labour law in her work. She is the author of The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law (OUP 2015) (co-winner of the Odysseus Prize 2016) 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 (co-editors Michelle Foster and Jane McAdam) (OUP 2021) and Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (co-editor Mark Freedland) (OUP 2014),  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 was the Principal Investigator of RefMig, an ERC-funded research project exploring refugee mobility, recognition and rights (2018-2024), and currently leads the Volkswagen Foundation funded AFAR (Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) project. She has also undertaken research for UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. 

She has supervised 7 doctorates to completion, and examined over 20 across the globe, on a wide variety of topics in global refugee and migration law. Her supervisees are now successful academics, or are working in leading legal practices or advocacy organisations. She has also supervised dozens of masters’ theses, many of which were published. She has also successfully mentored a Marie Curie grantee for funded postdoctoral study. She welcomes approaches from outstanding graduates wishing to undertake doctorates or postdoctoral work in global refugee and migration law.