Dr Regina Jefferies
Post-Doc Fellow
Law & Justice
School of Global & Public Law
Dr Jefferies is a lawyer and Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, ARC Laureate Evacuations Research Hub at the University of New South Wales. She is also an affiliate of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University. Dr Jefferies specialises in international human rights law and international refugee law, with a focus on transnational legal theory, the law of state responsibility, and the application of international legal norms in transboundary and multi-jurisdictional settings. Her research publications have examined the role of street-level bureaucrats, sub-state entities, and international organisations in the implementation and contestation of international legal norms.
Her current work as part of the ARC Laureate Evacuations Research Hub critically explores international law in relation to the concept of 'evacuations' in a variety of transboundary contexts, including disasters, climate change, conflict, and emergencies.
Dr Jefferies has extensive experience in the practice of asylum and refugee law before United States administrative agencies and the United States federal courts. She holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales; a Master of Studies from the University of Oxford in International Human Rights Law; a Juris Doctorate from Arizona State University; and a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from The George Washington University.
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John S. Lancy Distinguished Alumni Award, Arizona State University Law Journal (2021)
PLuS Alliance International Interdisciplinary Researcher (2018-2019)
National Advocate of the Year, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (2018)
Special Recognition Award, Advocates for Human Rights (2017)
My research explores the pathways, drivers and effects of legal consciousness and norm internalisation in decision-making within transboundary human rights frameworks. The overarching theme of the work is tackling complex – and often hidden – problems in international law and policy through the multi-method generation of original data and analysis to inform and influence policy implementation and development. The research links the fields of International Refugee Law, Human Rights Law, and Administrative Law, while drawing interdisciplinary connections with sociology and policy implementation studies. I combine doctrinal review with empirical and data-driven social science methods to narrow the gap between legal theory and practice, while exploring and developing mechanisms to address “wicked problems” in the migration and refugee law space. My current research agenda consists of two distinct, but related projects: (1) an investigation of international legal compliance which will produce empirical data identifying agents and pathways of internalization in the implementation of transnational refugee law; and (2) an interdisciplinary exploration of how the use of technology influences policy development and State operational compliance with legal norms in the migration and asylum framework.