Beyond Assad: Statelessness and Justice for Syria’s Future
When: Tuesday, May 5, 2026, 5:00 PM - 7:31 PM
Where: Lecture Theatre, Centre for Commercial Legal Studies (CCLS), 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, Queen Mary University of London, London WC2A 3JB
In the aftermath of Assad’s fall, debates about the future of Syria are increasingly shaped by pressures to return refugees. With over a million Syrians already back and Western states reconsidering their protection policies, urgent questions arise about the risks of statelessness, the legality of forced or premature return, and the place of displaced populations in Syria’s transition.
This event brings together academics and practitioners to explore how statelessness, refugee return, and transitional justice intersect in post-Assad Syria.
By situating statelessness at the centre of debates on Syria’s post-conflict future, the panel offers a timely forum for researchers, NGOs, students, and policymakers to critically assess the humanitarian and legal dilemmas shaping Syria beyond Assad. The discussion will address the creation of new stateless populations among returnees, the tension between international refugee law and repatriation pressures, and the challenges of including displaced and stateless communities in justice and accountability processes.
The discussion will be chaired and moderated by Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax, founding Director of the (B)OrderS Centre (Queen Mary University of London and Hertie School).
About the speakers
Dr Haqqi Braham (Linköping University, Sweden)
Paper: ‘Statelessness in Chronotopes: Negotiating Citizenship and Kurdish Identity Between Syria and Exile’
Bio: Haqqi Bahram is a Lecturer in Social and Cultural Analysis and Global Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. He earned his PhD in 2025, focusing on how statelessness intersects with forced migration and identity formation among stateless Kurds from Syria in Germany and Sweden. In 2022, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Birmingham. His research critically engages with citizenship theory, global governance, refugee inclusion and representation, and the politics of knowledge about statelessness.
Dr Roua Al-Taweel (Ulster University)
Title: ‘Contours of Change? Gendered Statelessness and Displacement in Syria's Transition’
Bio: Roua Al Taweel is a scholar of transitional justice with over twenty years of insights into forced displacement and the gendered dimensions of conflict in Syria and the broader Levant. She is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, where she completed her PhD in Transitional Justice and lectured in International Law (2024–25). She has contributed to multiple research networks, including the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub and the Education, Peace, and Politics (EPP) Network. Beyond academia, Roua serves as a trustee of Hawiati – the MENA Statelessness Network, and is a founding member and trustee of the Syrian Academics and Researchers Network in the UK (SARN-UK).
Dr Thomas McGee (EUI, Max Webber Programme)
Title: “Syrian Statelessness in Transition: Assessing Change in the Making’
Bio: Thomas McGee is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of legal and social studies of the Middle East, with focus on Syria, Kurdish dynamics and the wider Levant region. Thomas obtained his PhD at Melbourne Law School on ‘Syria’s Changing Statelessness Landscape: 2011 as Critical Juncture’. In 2024, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. He holds an MA in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter and a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages from the University of Cambridge. Thomas speaks Arabic and Kurdish and has worked for a decade as an analyst and advisor for humanitarian and development programmes in Syria. Thomas is currently preparing his PhD for publication as a book, while continuing to theorise the legal landscape and exploring legal reform dynamics in Syria, as well as working on a project to develop a case law database relating to statelessness and nationality issues in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dr Malak Benslama-Dabdoub (Royal Holloway University of London)
Title: ‘The Coloniality of Kurdish and Palestinian Statelessness: When Ethnic Identities Meet Stateless Identities’
Bio: Malak Benslama-Dabdoub is a Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway University of London, where she teaches across core areas of English law and specialises in asylum, migration, and human rights law. She holds a PhD in International Refugee Law from Queen Mary University of London. Her research sits at the intersection of refugee law, statelessness, and postcolonial legal theory. It examines how colonial nationality regimes continue to shape contemporary asylum adjudication, with a particular focus on Kurdish and Palestinian experiences in the United Kingdom and France. She is currently developing a monograph based on her PhD thesis.
About (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders, Migration and Displacement
Founded in 2022, the (B)Orders Centre focuses on the study of bordering, ordering and othering processes through law. It constitutes an excellence hub for intellectual collaboration and the evaluation of the role of law in the making and unmaking of borders and their impact on global (im)mobility. It connects scholars within and beyond Queen Mary Law School to harness existing inter- and multi-disciplinary research into law, borders and (im)mobility and shape future policy and research agendas in response to global challenges.