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Dr Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova

Keywords: Access to asylum, family reunification, externalisation of migration controls, EU-Belarus border crisis 

Working Groups: Working Group on Internal Displacement Law and Policy; Working Group on Externalisation

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Bio

Dr Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova is an interdisciplinary scholar working in the field of European and comparative migration, asylum and nationality law and policies. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the newly established Rule of Law Clinic at Central European University’s Democracy Institute, a project funded by Stiftung Mercator. She is also a Research Affiliate with the Refugee Law Initiative, University of London.

She received a PhD in Law from Queen Mary University of London in 2021 and has taught courses, given guest lectures and held fellowships at numerous institutions, including London School of Economics (LSE), Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin), Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Centre of Law and Society at Cardiff University.

Aleksandra’s work combines doctrinal and empirical research methods by particularly focusing on the nexus between migration, conflict, security and human rights. Her research agenda has developed along two principal strands: family reunification and access to international protection. She has published extensively in these areas, including a monograph The Concept of Marriages of Convenience in EU Free Movement Law: EU and UK Perspectives (Brill, 2024). Her book critically examines the concept of marriages of convenience in EU and UK law in so far as it concerns the residence rights of mobile EU citizens and their non-EU national spouses, both pre- and post-Brexit.

Aleksandra’s ongoing project focuses on the situation at the EU’s external border with Belarus and Russia, particularly where it concerns access to the asylum procedure, border violence, and prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment. It also evaluates the EU-level response to the crisis and critically engages with the concept of ‘migrant instrumentalisation’. As part of her study, she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which involved interviews with legal practitioners, volunteers and over 40 non-EU nationals affected – predominantly from the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Further, in her role as a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Rule of Law Clinic she has prepared third party interventions before the European Court of Human Rights in cases involving asylum-seekers who have attempted to enter the EU from Belarus.

Aleksandra is also interested in developments in migration and nationality laws in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the implications of EU migration and asylum regimes for Iraqi nationals, particularly the position of Yazidi protection seekers in Germany.

Aleksandra came to academia via a non-traditional route, having first worked for nearly 15 years in journalism. She completed her PhD in the UK part-time whilst being largely based in Bonn where she worked for Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (Russian Service). She has also participated in several long-term journalistic investigations and has extensive experience interviewing vulnerable individuals and covering trauma. She obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Latvia (2008, 2010) and Riga Graduate School of Law (2010). 

Selected publications