Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond

Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond is a global leader in refugee studies and refugee rights advocacy. She was the founding director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (1982–1996), the world’s first institution dedicated to the study of refugees. She went on to establish the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda (1997) and a refugee legal aid program in Cairo, Egypt (2000) that is now AMERA-Egypt. Dr. Harrell-Bond currently sits on the Board of Directors of AMERA-UK, AMERA-Egypt’s parent organization. She also previously chaired the Board of Directors of Asylum Access (2005–2009), and remains a Founding Patron of the organization. Currently, Dr. Harrell-Bond directs the Refugee Program of the Fahamu Trust, an international NGO working on social justice issues and the founding Secretariat of the SRLAN, a network of refugee rights advocacy organizations throughout the Global South.

Dr. Harrell-Bond’s pivotal contributions to refugee studies and the global refugee rights movement have been widely recognized. Among other accolades, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Anthropological Association in 1996, and in 2005 was made an Order of the British Empire ‘for services to refugee studies’ in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List. She is an Honorary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Dr. Harrell-Bond studied social anthropology; she received a Diploma, an M.Litt. based on fieldwork in an urban housing estate, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford based on fieldwork in Sierra Leone.