Bio
Valentin Feneberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for Public Policy and Law at the Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany), and, in Trinity Term 2024, a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. From 2019 to 2024, he was research associate and coordinator of the Law & Society Institute at Humboldt University Berlin. This is also where he obtained his PhD in Political Science, with a dissertation focused on the use of country of origin information in asylum appeal adjudication. His current research focuses on the use of evidence in refugee status determination, the application of complementary protection statuses, and protection from severe socio-economic conditions as a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. His work has been published in leading journals such as the International Journal of Refugee Law and Social & Legal Studies (forthcoming), along with numerous German legal and social science journals. Additionally, he is a member of the research network of the ERC-funded ASYFAIR project, where he has honed his skills in collaborative, interdisciplinary research.
Selected Publications and Talks
Selected Publications
*Feneberg (under review): Money, not Protection. Assisted Return Programmes and the Timing of Future Harm in Judicial Refugee Status Determination, Social & Legal Studies (Special Issue: Evidence-Mak-ing in European Asylum Processes – New Empirical Findings and Theoretical Insights).
[Edited volume] Feneberg; Sußner (2023): Courts in Context: Empirical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Asylum Law, Special Issue of the German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies 7 (1). Au-thors: Cathryn Costello, Janna Wessels, Lena Riemer, and others.
Feneberg; Sußner (2023): Courts in Context. An Empirical Re-Evaluation of Categorization in the Asylum Regime, German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies 7 (1), 4–14.
*Feneberg; Gill; Hoellerer; Scheinert (2022): It’s Not What You Know, It’s How You Use It: The Application of Country of Origin Information in Judicial Refugee Status Determination Decisions – A Case Study of Germany, International Journal of Refugee Law 34 (2), 241–267.
Feneberg; Pettersson (2022): Schutz vor extremer Armut - Asylrechtsfortbildung durch Verwaltungsgerichte, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht (NVwZ) 41 (20), 1519–1524.
Feneberg; Pettersson (2021): Kollektive Gefährdungslage Corona – Die Pandemie in der Asylrechtsprechung am Beispiel Afghanistan, Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik (ZAR), 41 (5), 196–204.
Feneberg; Pukrop (2020): Statistik und Wirklichkeit. Asyl- und Gerichtsstatistik des BAMF verzerren das tatsächliche Bild der Schutzgewährung, Asylmagazin 22 (10-11), 355–361.
Olivier-Mensah; Duscha; Stier; Feneberg; Jung; Meier; Samhammer (2020): Developing Lifeworld Oriented Perspectives for Return Migration. Needs, Vulnerabilities and Support of Refugees in Germany, research report, Mainz.
*Feneberg (2019): »Ich zwinge niemanden, freiwillig zurück zu gehen.« Die institutionelle Umsetzung der Politik der geförderten Rückkehr durch staatliche und nicht-staatliche Akteure [»I don’t force anybody to go back voluntarily.« The Institutional Implementation of Politics of Assisted Return by State and Non-state Actors], German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies 3 (1), 8–43.
Talks
Refuge from Poverty. The Evolution of Humanitarian Protection through Domestic and International Courts, Conference: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75: Rethinking and Constructing its Future Together, Ghent University, 6–8 December 2023 (with Paul Pettersson).
Authority vs Assumptions. A new approach to the application of country knowledge in asylum adjudi-cation, Workshop: Legal Expertise in Theory and Practice, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, 25-26 February 2021.
A socio-legal reading of climate litigation. The State of the Netherlands (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate) and Stichting Urgenda, Workshop: But what does the law say? Reading legal texts socio-legally, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford (online), 10 December 2020.
The use of Country of Origin Information for refugee recognition in asylum appeal adjudication – The case of Eritrea, Workshop: Recognising Refugees, Oxford Refugees Studies Centre & DeZIM, 12 De-cember 2019.
For a comprehensive list, see www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ipw/academic-staff/valentin-feneberg.html.