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Bio

Marina Sharpe is an Arnold & Blema Steinberg Post-Doctoral Fellow in International Migration Law and Policy at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Faculty of Law, McGill University. Marina completed her doctorate in law at the University of Oxford, where she was a Trudeau Scholar. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, was about refugee protection in Africa. She is called to the bars of England & Wales (Inner Temple) and New York, and spent over two years in private practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York and London. Prior to this, she worked as a legal advisor with the Refugee Law Project of Makerere University in Kampala, and later returned to Uganda as legal officer of the International Refugee Rights Initiative. Marina regularly undertakes consultancy work for organizations including Amnesty International, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and UNHCR. She has taught at the Universities of London, Oxford and Sherbrooke and has guest lectured at Georgetown, McGill, Oxford, the University of Tripoli and Yale. Her scholarly work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, as well as by UNHCR. In addition to her doctorate, she holds common and civil law degrees from McGill, an MSc in development studies from the LSE and a BA in economics and international development from McGill.

Publications/recent projects

Refereed journal articles

  • Marina Sharpe, ‘The 1951 Refugee Convention’s Contingent Rights Framework and Article 26 of the ICCPR: A Fundamental Incompatibility?’ (2014) 30 Refuge 5
  • Marina Sharpe, ‘Organization of African Unity and African Union Engagement with Refugee Protection: 1963–2011’ (2013) 21 Afr J Int’l & Comp L 50
  • Marina Sharpe, ‘The 1969 African Refugee Convention: Innovations, Misconceptions, and Omissions’ (2012) 58 McGill LJ 95
  • Marina Sharpe & Salima Namusobya, ‘Refugee Status Determination and the Rights of Recognized Refugees Under Uganda’s Refugees Act 2006’ (2012) 24 Int’l J Ref L 561

Book chapters

  • Marina Sharpe, ‘The 1969 OAU Refugee Convention in the Context of Individual Refugee Status Determination’ in Volker Türk, Alice Edwards & Cornelis Wouters (eds), In Flight from Conflict and Violence: UNHCR’s Consultations on Refugee Status and Other Forms of International Protection (Cambridge University Press 2017)
  • Marina Sharpe, ‘The Impact of European Refugee Law on the Regional, Sub-Regional and National Planes in Africa’ in Hélène Lambert, Jane McAdam & Maryellen Fullerton (eds), The Global Reach of European Refugee Law (Cambridge University Press 2013)