Rwanda has dominated news headlines in the UK since the signing of a controversial agreement allowing the forced deportation of people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda. This British Academy Fellowship offers me the opportunity to go behind these headlines, to provide a wider account of how Rwanda has become increasingly embroiled in the immigration regimes of Europe and North America.
Dr Nicola Palmer, Reader in Criminal Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law.
16 May 2024
Dr Nicola Palmer awarded prestigious Mid-Career Fellowship by the British Academy
Dr Nicola Palmer has been awarded the fellowship to fund her project examining Rwanda’s role in relation to international migration.
Dr Nicola Palmer is one of 44 recipients of the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowships and is also one of two King’s academics to receive the award in this round.
Dr Palmer was awarded in the region of £127,000 to fund her project that seeks to examine Rwanda’s role in the legal ordering of global migration and how it illuminates patterns in which international criminal law is renationalised in ways that can potentially reinforce and racialise state borders.
The project draws together an original dataset and ethnographic work to track the intersection of deportation and immigration proceedings with charges alleging involvement in an international crime. The overall aim of the project is to analyse the social functions of these legal processes and their implications for obligations owed to people escaping war and persecution.
As part of the award, Dr Palmer will be a visiting scholar at the University of Cape Town where she will host a Global Public Engagement Workshop.
The significant value of the awards enables researchers to relinquish their normal teaching and administrative duties to focus on their research with the aim of promoting understanding and awareness of their subject area.
The Mid-Career Fellowships are given to mid-career academics in recognition of outstanding research that advances public engagement and understanding of the social sciences, arts and humanities.
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Reader in Criminal Law