Geoff Gilbert

Geoff Gilbert (@geoffxgilbert) is a Professor of Law in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He was Head of Department between 2000-2003 and 2011-13. In 2012, he was appointed a Professorial Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law from 2002-15; as the former Editor-in-Chief, he sits on the Advisory Board. He is author of ‘Current Issues in the Application of the Exclusion Clauses’ in Feller, Türk and Nicholson, Refugee Protection in International Law (2003), part of UNHCR’s Global Consultations on the 50th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention. He was founding Director of Studies for UNHCR’s annual Thematic Refugees and Human Rights course for judges, government officials and UNHCR staff at the International Institute for Humanitarian Law, Sanremo, Italy, from 2005 to 2007. In 2014 he was appointed a consultant to UNHCR (with Anna Magdalena Rüsch) on Rule of Law: Engagement for Solutions and is part of the Solutions Alliance Thematic Group on Rule of Law. In April 2016, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung invited him to present papers in Manila and Canberra on refugee solutions in the region and in the September he was a speaker at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. In 2017, again with Anna Magdalena, they were commissioned by the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW, to write Creating Safe Zones and Safe Corridors in Conflict Situations: Providing protection at home or preventing the search for asylum? Since 1995, he has been involved in the annual simulated humanitarian exercise for human rights masters students and officers in 16 Air Assault Brigade, the UK’s Rapid Reaction Force. In 2009 he was elected a Bencher of the Middle Temple and was called in February 2010.