Centre for Fundamental Rights

Research projects

Research Project

AFAR: Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees

This is a four-year (2021-25) collaborative project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation in the frame of its "Challenges for Europe" programme. It investigates the usages of new technologies in migration and asylum governance.
Research project

Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law

This three year (2023-2026) research project is  funded by the DFG. It investigates the contribution of UN Human Rights Treaty Body case law to the development of and impact on international human rights law.
Research project

RefMig: Refugees Are Migrants

The RefMig project aims to re-examine the refugee regime through the lens of mobility and migration. It is a collaborative project based at Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental Rights and the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. The project is a Horizon 2020 award funded by the European Research Council.
Research project

Bad Faith Violations of Human Rights

The project sheds light on the recent doctrinal innovation at the European Court of Human Rights of the bad faith review, understood as a review of whether ulterior political or economic motives are at play when states restrict human rights.
Research project

Framing Reality and Normativity in European Human Rights Law: Climate Change, Migration, and Authoritarianism

This project investigates how the relationship between reality and normativity in European human rights law at the Council of Europe is negotiated across three areas : climate change, migration and authoritarianism.
Research project

Missing Migrants: Identifying and Shaping Obligations for Protection

The MIRO project aims at identifying and interpreting international legal obligations regarding ‘missing migrants’ and accordingly critique and shape the practices of the EU, its Member States, and pertinent international organisations.
Research project

Dissecting the Inter-American Human Rights System in the age of climate change

This PhD research project focuses on the role of the Inter-American Human Rights System in addressing climate change at present and in the future.   
Research project

Postcolonial bordering: Discursive contestations in human rights law

This interdisciplinary PhD research project examines to what extent human rights law can counteract exclusion at the border and traces the forms of statehood and subjecthood that emerge through legal discourse.
Research project

Too little, too late?: The effectiveness of Article 18 ECHR

This doctoral project examines the use of Article 18 of the ECHR with doctrinal, normative and socio-legal methodologies to better delineate and realise its operative potential.
Research project

Leading Cases in UN Human Rights Law

This project aims to shed light on the jurisprudence of the UN human rights treaty bodies and its contributions to international human rights law.
Research project

ReLiCon: Religion, Illiberal Constitutionalism and the Retrogression of Fundamental Rights in East Central Europe

This research project studies the impact of organised majority or (de facto) state religion on the constitutional and judicial politics of fundamental rights in East Central Europe.

Completed and former projects

Research project

European Legal Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021-2023)

This project comparatively examined the use of emergency powers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of human rights and the rule of law particularly focusing on three European case studies: Germany, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Research project

In the Making of New Europe: Embodied Politics of Borderlands (2021-2023)

The research project contributed to critical migration and border studies by examining the reconstruction of EU borderlands at multiple scales through the governance of migration particularly in Greece and the Balkan routes.
Research project

Undoing Discriminatory Borders (2020-2023)

The project sought to uncover and examine discrimination in immigration law and migration control. It was hosted jointly by Hertie Shool's Centre for Fundamental Rights and the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
Research project

Hard Refugee Protection through Soft Enforcement (2019-2022)

The research examined the normative structure and practical consequences of various United Nations human rights treaty bodies focusing on refugee rights, in particular as ‘soft enforcers’ of the norm of non-refoulement.
Research project

The spectacle of international criminal law before national courts (2019-2022)

This research sought to unveil why, when and how national judges resort to modern international criminal law and what is the impact of such process on domestic human rights law.