Lama Karame

Lama Karamé is a DPhil Candidate at the Faculty of law, affiliated with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. She is a Graduate Research Resident at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights for the year 2020. Her doctoral research explores the socio-legal conceptualisation of the child in Lebanon through an empirical investigation in juvenile courts. Her research is generously funded by the Amelia Jackson Studentship at Exeter College. She holds a bachelor's degree in Public Law from the University of Saint Joseph in Beirut and a bachelor's degree in Sociology from the Lebanese University. In 2015, she graduated with distinction from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London) with an LLM in Law, Culture and Society earning the Sarah Spells Prize for the best performing student and the Best Dissertation awards for her master’s thesis.  Prior to completing her master's, Lama was a visiting scholar at the Columbia Law School in New York, her research focused on the role of legal professions in promoting social justice. Lama is a lawyer, senior researcher and President of the administrative board of the Beirut-based regional NGO and research centre, The Legal Agenda. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law in the Middle East by LexisNexis. Prior to coming to Oxford, she directed the strategic litigation programme at The Legal Agenda , where she litigated landmark human rights cases before Lebanese courts. She published numerous studies, policy papers and articles commenting on issues of family law, children’s rights, gender, and social justice in Lebanon. Her previous research broadly focuses on questions of law and social mobilisation, and namely the use of strategic litigation in the Middle East and North Africa.