Dr Hugo Storey awarded Honorary Professorship at the RLI

We are pleased to announce that Dr Hugo Storey has been awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Refugee Law Initiative, University of London.

This is in acknowledgement of his long and distinguished career in the field of refugee law.

The University welcomes him to the School and is delighted to have the benefit of his expert input into research, refugee status practice, and guidance on a number of the RLI’s ongoing teaching and research activities.

RLI Director, Professor David Cantor, says:

We're delighted that the university has conferred an honorary Professorship on Hugo, who has been an active and longstanding Research Fellow at the RLI. This conferral recognises that contribution alongside his wider leading role as a thinker and scholar of refugee law and senior judge of many years standing. The RLI staff are greatly looking forward to continuing together with Hugo in this role over the coming years.

Biography

Hugo Storey is a retired judge of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) in the United Kingdom. In an academic capacity he has published widely on human rights, refugee law, international law and European law issues. A former law lecturer in Leeds, he has been a Research Fellow attached to the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) since … , and, since February 2024, an Adjunct Professor, Kaldor Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney. His book on The Refugee Definition in International Law was published by Oxford University Press in October 2023.

He is one of the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges’ (IARMJ’s) founding members and is currently a member of its Supervisory Council as well as being the honorary president of the IARMJ’s European Chapter and co-chair of the IARMJ Editorial Board.. During his time as a UK Senior Immigration Judge, he initiated the tribunal country guidance system. He has extensive experience in training judges both in Europe and around the world, including for UNHCR. He was instrumental in establishing (in 2012) the biennial tripartite roundtable between judges of the CJEU, ECtHR and national judges on international protection issues. Between 2015-2022, he headed the judicial work on two projects between IARMJ-Europe and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) (now European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA)) to review, update and develop core judicial training materials on asylum law in 27 Member States. These projects resulted in over 16 publications, most of which have been translated into several languages. Since 2016, these have formed the nucleus of the training in workshops of members of courts and tribunals in EU members states as well as several adjoining countries. During 2025-6 he will be working as a judicial expert further updating two of the core judicial analyses, on Qualification and Procedures.

He continues to be active in training, both in the U.K. and in Europe. Since 2022 he has been assisting several British dependent territories with asylum issues. He is currently writing a book on International Due Process Standards in Asylum Processes.