{"id":20071,"date":"2023-05-26T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/?p=20071"},"modified":"2023-05-26T13:52:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T11:52:45","slug":"chatting-with-moira-dustin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/chatting-with-moira-dustin\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatting with Moira Dustin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the latest interview of the V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog\u2019s symposium \u2018The Person behind the Academic\u2019! With us we have Dr. Moira Dustin, and through the following questions, we will try to get a glimpse of his interests, sources of inspiration and habits. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome Dr. Dustin and thank you very much for accepting our invitation!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pleasure. I\u2019m so happy to have been asked. This is a pleasant distraction from way more tedious tasks.<\/p>\n

We have met each other through the \u2018Women in International Refugee Law\u2019 Network, which you and Dr Christel Querton set up in 2021. May I ask, how the idea of setting up this network arose and what your visions for this network are?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christel and I know each other from way back when we met as members of the Asylum Aid Women\u2019s Project Advisory Group in 2009. Asylum Aid was an NGO providing legal support to asylum seekers in the UK and the Women\u2019s Project was a brilliant arm of it. The Project secured valuable gains for refugee women, such as provision of childcare during asylum interviews and the right to ask for a female interviewer. It was also inspirational in prioritizing the experiences of refugee women and producing the Charter of rights of women seeking asylum affirming that women seeking protection should have the same rights as any woman. The Advisory Group had a diverse membership and we had some wonderful, warm and productive meetings. Sadly, in the spate of cuts to civil society organisations in the UK in recent years, the Asylum Aid Women\u2019s Project closed.<\/p>\n

Skip forward a decade and Christel and I were both working as academics with an interest in asylum and gender \u2013 Christel at the University of the West of England and me at the University of Sussex. We were both also teaching on the University of London MA on Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies. Christel contacted me to talk about the decline in momentum around women\u2019s asylum issues \u2013 a decline we observed both in civil society with the closure of the Women\u2019s Project, and in academia with less research on issues affecting women seeking international protection. It felt as if this was no longer a \u2018hot\u2019 topic for publishers and funders. We held a roundtable in May 2021 to discuss whether other people also felt there was a gap. Academics and activists and \u2018experts by experience\u2019 from different countries attended and were enthusiastic about the value of creating a space to talk about and collaborate on topics of concern to refugee women. On the back of that meeting we set up Women in Refugee Law (WiRL), a network to centre refugee women in international law, policy and practice. We now have 120 members and meet quarterly as well as collaborating in-between meetings, for example, on a special issue<\/a> of Refugee Survey Quarterly () and more recently on the V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog Symposium for International Women\u2019s Day 2023. I\u2019d say the vision of WiRL\u2019s members is of inclusivity and diversity, a network that brings together academics, lawyers, activists and refugee women \u2013 categories that are not mutually exclusive of course \u2013 from around the world, not just the usual Global-North suspects, recognizing and attempting to address the disparities and inequalities in refugee scholarship and policy. Personally, I hope it will also be an online \u2013 online for the time being at least \u2013 space where people with shared interests enjoy meeting and chatting.<\/p>\n

What was it that brought you to academia and what made you stay?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I finished my PhD in 2007 while I was working for an equality and human rights network in the UK and I stayed in the third sector (as the charity or NGO sector is sometimes called in the UK) for another ten years. I always wanted to be a researcher and continue to develop the ideas in my PhD, and I had the incredible good fortune of applying for and getting a job at Sussex University Law School in 2016. Lucky because I had minimal academic experience and was a 50-year-old woman starting her academic career! The project \u2013 about LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in Europe \u2013 was enormously rewarding, not least because of the fantastic colleagues I was working with. I learnt so much from them and was eventually able to secure a permanent post at Sussex where I do the usual (usual in the UK anyway) mixture of teaching and research. I love it and I\u2019m very aware that I\u2019ve fallen on my feet at a time when some of my friends are starting to think about retiring.<\/p>\n

If you were not an academic, what would you be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I were a different person, and had a creative bone in my body, I\u2019d love to have been a potter and make creative and also useful objects like coffee mugs!<\/p>\n

Could you share with us three authors that have had a major impact on your perception of justice?<\/strong><\/p>\n