Friday, March 23rd, 2012 Between Testimony and Bearing Witness: Sexual and Gender Based Violence and the EU Asylum Process

Description

Professor Ruffer’s research centres on questions of citizenship and human rights with a particular focus on immigrant integration, refugees, and the process of international justice. Her article “Courts Across Borders: The Implications of Judicial Agency for Human Rights and Democracy” (co-authored with David Jacobson) was published in Human Rights Quarterly (February 2003), has since been reprinted in People Out of Place (Routledge, 2004) and Dialogues on Migration Policy (Lexington Books, 2006). Her current projects include a monograph, “Citizens,” that draws upon constitutional theory to offer a conceptual framework within which to understand immigrant controversies in the U.S. and Europe and research on the use of testimonies and the processes of international justice in addressing the consequences of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo through rule of law. She is the founder of the Center for Forced Migration Studies at the Buffet Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern (http://www.bcics.northwestern.edu/programs/migrationstudies) and the Director of the International Studies Program. Aside from her academic work, Professor Ruffer has worked as an immigration attorney representing political asylum claimants both as a solo-practitioner and as a pro-bono attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center. She teaches courses on citizenship, immigration and the Politics of International Human Rights and is a fellow at the Public Affairs Residential College.