Dr Emilie McDonnell is a human rights and refugee advocate and professional, with practical and academic experience and expertise in human rights, refugee and international law. She currently works with Human Rights Watch in London as the UK Advocacy and Communications Coordinator.
During her time at Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship (2016-21), Emilie was awarded a Doctorate in Law on protecting the right to leave of asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants during externalised migration control, an MPhil in Law, and Bachelor of Civil Law with Distinction. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Criminology) and a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours in Law from the University of Tasmania, and is also a qualified Australian lawyer.
In 2013, she co-founded and was a Director until 2016 of the Tasmanian Refugee Legal Service. She has experience working with the European Research Council’s RefMig Project, UNRWA's Department of Legal Affairs in East Jerusalem, the Oxford Human Rights Hub and a UK legal aid law firm in the immigration detention and deportation team. Her work has been published in blogs and articles and she has also appeared on radio and television, including BBC World News. She is an Adjunct Researcher at the University of Tasmania School of Law, and has taught on various subjects at the University of Oxford and the University of Tasmania.