Ellen Desmet

Ellen Desmet is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University, Belgium. As the first holder of the chair in migration law, she founded the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Her research is situated at the intersection of migration law, human rights and legal anthropology. She teaches various courses on migration law and socio-legal studies, and coordinates the migration law component of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic.

She is chair of Nansen (the Belgian Refugee Council), co-supervisor-spokesperson of the Human Rights Research Network (HRRN), and member of the steering board of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR). She is also a board member of the Federal Migration Centre Myria, Unia, the Dutch-Flemish Law and Society Association (VSR) and the Commission on Legal Pluralism, as well as a member of the UGent Human Rights Centre.

Ellen Desmet complemented her law studies (KU Leuven) with a master in Cultures and Development Studies (KU Leuven) and a master in Development Cooperation (Ghent University). She holds a PhD in Law from the KU Leuven (2010) and previously held positions at the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre, the Law and Development Research Group of the University of Antwerp and the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University.