News & Events

Join us for the book launch of 'State Responsibility and International Refugee Law: History, Theory, and Application' by Sophie Capicchiano Young.

When: 1pm-2pm Wednesday, 4 March 2026

Where: Seminar Room, Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway

Speaker Bios: Cathryn Costello is Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, where she is also Director of the PhD Programme. She was formerly Professor of Fundamental Rights and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School (2020 – 2023).. She was Andrew W Mellon Professor of International Refugee and Migration Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (2013-2023). She remains a Visiting Professor at both the Hertie School and the University of Oxford. 
 
She is a leading scholar of international and European refugee and migration law and also explores the relationship between migration and labour law in her work. She is the author of The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law (OUP 2015) (co-winner of the Odysseus Prize 2016) and is currently completing a monograph examining refugee recognition practices globally, as well as a short critical introduction to international refugee law. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (co-editors Michelle Foster and Jane McAdam) (OUP 2021) and Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (co-editor Mark Freedland) (OUP 2014), a ground-breaking work on the impact of immigration law and status in labour relations. Her most recent collaborative volume was IOM Unbound: Obligations and Accountability of the International Organisation for Migration in an Era of Expansion (co-editors Megan Bradley & Angela Sherwood) (Cambridge University Press, June 2022), examining legal and political accountability of this IO across its diverse areas of activity.

Sophie Capicchiano Young is a lawyer and doctor of public international law with a specialisation in international refugee law and state responsibility.  She is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.  Dr Capicchiano Young's monograph, State Responsibility and International Refugee Law: History, Theory, and Application, was published by Brill in 2025.  Her research has been published in the International Journal of Refugee Law, the Asian Journal of International Law, the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, and the European Journal of Migration and Law.  She will contribute a chapter to the Edward Elgar Handbook on State Responsibility in the 21st Century on Decolonisation and the Codification of State Responsibility (Edward Elgar 2026).  Dr Capicchiano Young's research concerns the theory and application of international refugee law, refugee protection at the US southwest border, and throughout Central America.  She has worked for the R4V Platform, the University of London, the Graduate Institute of Geneva, UNHCR, and the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.  She has a Master of International Law (Geneva Academy), a Juris Doctor (RMIT University) and a Master of Applied Linguistics (Monash University).  She is currently the co-chair of the American Society of International Law's Migration Law Interest Group.