Our PhD researchers

Ben Willis is a PhD student in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, where the focus of his research is on atrocity crimes and R2P framing in the case of North Korea. His work is funded by a three-year Leeds Anniversary Research Scholarship. Ben has previously worked as a research assistant for SERIO and within the Individuals at Risk Campaign Team at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. He holds MA (Distinction) and BSc (First Class Hons) degrees in International Relations from the University of Plymouth. Ben is also a research assistant for Protection Approaches, a not-for-profit human rights NGO that works to improve the protection of people from identity-based violence.

Chloë M. Gilgan is a White Rose DTC scholar who was awarded an ESRC scholarship to complete her PhD in Law at the University of York through the Centre for Applied Human Rights. Her dissertation, entitled Localising the Responsibility to Protect: The UK and Syrian Refugees, examines the link between the UK’s commitment to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm and the UK’s resettlement policies on Syrian refugees fleeing mass atrocities. She is supervised by Dr Lars Waldorf (University of York) and Dr Edward Newman (University of Leeds). Chloë graduated cum laude with a juris doctorate of law (JD) from New York Law School and cum laude with a BA degree in Urban Studies and Film from Barnard College, Columbia University. Chloë was awarded the Professor Lung-Chu Chen Award for Excellence in the Field of Human Rights for four public interest fellowship awards during law school. The fellowships enabled her to provide legal assistance to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, the Crown Prosecution Service in London, the Women's Rights Project at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, the New York State Division of Human Rights and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia where she was part of the the Delic defence team. Chloë's initial foray into refugee and asylum law was through the Special Juvenile Immigrant Status Project where she assisted a practicing immigration attorney in processing and advocating for juveniles who qualified for special status in the United States due to neglect, abandonment or abuse. After admission to the New York State Bar in 2009, Chloë worked at Laura Devine Solicitors, a boutique London law firm handling US and UK immigration. Chloë holds a Level 2 Accreditation in Immigration and Asylum Law from the Solicitors Regulation Authority which qualifies her to provide legal services to indigent asylum seekers in the UK. Chloë's research and expertise lies in US constitutional law and public international law.

Daniel Wand is a doctoral researcher in the School of Politics and International Studies. His research, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, seeks to generate a better understanding of the effect of shifting global power balances on the sustainability of liberal international society through an assessment of the relationship between the BRICS states and the International Criminal Court. Daniel also conducts research on the relationship between RtoP and the ICC, and Head of State immunity. During his PhD studies, Daniel has been a visiting researcher at the Centre for International Criminal Justice at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court. He sits on the editorial board of the Responsibility to Protect Student Journal and teaches international politics, public international law, and international human rights law as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Prior to joining the department, Daniel was a Director at the Human Security Centre, an independent international affairs think-tank, and a public law lawyer at a leading UK law firm. Daniel holds an LL.B. and an LL.M. in public international law with Distinction from the University of Sheffield.

Kalina Zhekova is a PhD  candidate focusing on Russian foreign policy and in particular, the discursive construction of identity and policy in Russian debates on intervention in response to the crises in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Her research is funded by a POLIS Research Studentship. She has also worked as a research assistant on a collaborative project between POLIS and Qatar University entitled ‘Soaring International Food Prices and Political Upheaval in Fragile Food Exporting Countries’ funded by the Qatar National Research Fund. Kalina holds an MA (Distinction) in International Relations from the University of Hull and a BA (First Class Hons) from Sofia University.

Samuel Jarvis is a PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Sheffield. His PhD research is titled “Moral Progress and its Political Limits: ‘Common Humanity’ as a Driver of State Behaviour” and is funded by an ESRC White Rose Network Scholarship. The project explores the complex relationship between the concept of humanity and the R2P, assessing the normative strengths and weaknesses of humanity as a motivational force, as well as tracing the role humanity has played in the theoretical development of the R2P. Samuel holds a Masters and BA in International Relations, both from the University of Leeds. He is a peer reviewer for The R2P Student Journal and a member of the BISA Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working Group. His research interests broadly cover the fields of international intervention, political theory, and international criminal justice.

Zain Maulana is a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. His research explains the engagement of Southeast Asian states with Responsibility to Protect (R2P) from the perspective of norm socialisation. Not only does the research focus on norm contestation between R2P and ASEAN principles, but it also examines the rhetorical behaviour of ASEAN states toward R2P. The research applies the perspective of communicative action and the concept of norm localisation to explain the complexity of R2P socialisation in the context of ASEAN regionalism and examine the gap of the states’ behaviour towards R2P. The research is expected to contributes in two areas: i) the study of norm socialisation and ii) the evolution of R2P especially in terms of the implementation of the principle in the ASEAN regionalism context. His research is supervised by Professor Edward Newman and Associate Professor Adrian Gallagher.