Yumna Kamel
Co-founder and CEO (U.K.)
Alongside executive duties, Yumna spearheads our Legal Advocacy project –– conducting legal research for live cases featuring elements of climate migration and raising the international legal community’s awareness for the issue –– all of which sets the foundation for Earth Refuge’s future social impact litigation.
Yumna is also the Legal Education Officer at Right to Remain, where she works on resources about the UK asylum and immigration system, including the Right to Remain Toolkit. She delivers legal workshops and collaborates with asylum and migrant groups across the country.
She was called to the Bar of England & Wales in 2020 and obtained a Public Interest LLM fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Outside of work, Yumna (really) loves to eat, create, and talk about food. If she weren’t in the legal field, she’d be a chef.
Stephanie Hader
Co-founder (Hong Kong)
Stephanie Hader is the Director of Legal Education at Earth Refuge. Alongside Co-founder Yumna Kamel, she runs innovative legal and field research programmes with law faculty students across Asia and North America. These interactive sessions serve a dual purpose; they function as a literal “think” tank which furthers Earth Refuge’s mission to brainstorm creative legal arguments, while at the same time inspiring the next generation of lawyers to think of the law as a tool for positive change.
Stephanie Hader is a Penn LLM Graduate with experience in drafting government reports for both the Australian and German Parliament. She also holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Hong Kong. Outside of Earth Refuge, she is a strategic researcher for the Institute of the North where she critically explores different theories and laws governing natural resource management.
When she is not researching, Stephanie is a Sofar Sounds Ambassador and reads Jorge Louis Borges, as he continues to rewire her perception of the world.
Robert Los
Director of Research (Germany)
Robert Los is a law student originally from Hamburg between the state exams with a completed specialization in corporate and capital markets law. He is working as Research Assistant at a law firm and has dealt with the topics of migration and climate mainly in the context of voluntary work.
As part of a Hamburg subgroup of Lawyers Without Borders, he has been involved in a study on the legal protection of unaccompanied minor refugees, and with fellow students he is involved in setting up a Climate Clinic as well as an interpreter and adviser in social law and deportation cases at the local law clinic.
At Earth Refuge he is responsible for coordinating and driving research projects and the resulting development of legal media products such as the database and toolkits.
Robert is also passionate about politics, economics, music and a little too much about all kinds of sports.
Daven Camille
Director of Business Systems and Intelligence (Australia)
Daven Camille is a Business Systems specialist based in Australia, with expertise in data visualisation, corporate finance and process automation.
Drawing from his role within the sustainable infrastructure sector and service with the Australian Defence Force, Daven hopes to utilise his passion for delivering actionable information and implementing innovative solutions through his proven experience in data analytics, as well as risk and operational management strategies.
Daven’s love for adventures sees him chase every opportunity to meet new people, go new places, and try new things, and when he’s not behind the desk you can find him on his latest escapade.
Antonia Panayotova
Digital Technology Manager (Bulgaria/U.K.)
Antonia Panayotova looks after our digital platforms, ensuring our website and legal database work well and stay secure. She is passionate about technology, data, innovation, and accessible services. In her day-to-day she works in the UK government testing ideas for how data can be used more effectively, ethically, and securely to create a better user experience for all.
Antonia is fascinated by ideas for how to use data and innovative technologies to create solutions for the most pressing climate problems too as sustainability is a personal passion.
In the time that’s left, she likes to keep busy with various outdoor adventure sports, travel, growing plants, and a bit of first aid volunteering.
Ben Chappelow
SEO (United States)
Benjamin Chappelow is a writer and narrative designer in the Appalachian mountains, United States.
As an immigration researcher and former Narrative Writer for the Climate Resilience Toolkit, he is focused on how the stories we tell dictate our behavior in an ecological crisis.
When he is not writing, Benjamin is trying to teach his cat how to type so he won’t have to.
Advisory Board
Dave Inder Comar, Esq.
Founding Advisor (U.S.)
Dave Inder Comar is the managing partner of Comar Mollé LLP, a technology law firm with offices in San Francisco and New York, and Executive Director of Just Atonement Inc., a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending democracy, human rights, and a livable planet.
Licensed to practice law before the California and New York bars, Mr. Comar is passionate about using the law to maintain and preserve global civilisation. He believes that the response to climate change must alleviate enduring inequalities and lay the foundation for a world where people live in balance with themselves, each other, and the planet.
Dr. Rafiqul Islam
Regional Advisor (Bangladesh)
Md Rafiqul Islam Ph.D. is a Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. Aside from his Bachelor and MPhil, which he completed at the same university, he also holds a MA degree in Environmental Security and Peace from the Un-University for Peace in Costa Rica and a Ph.D. from Flinders University, Australia. His thesis secured the John Lewis Silver Medal in South Australia. Dr. Islam’s primary research interests are peace and conflict studies, displacement and development. He also has a keen interest in global politics and security.
Dr. Islam is currently working as an Advisor of the Dhaka University Environmental Society (DUES) and volunteers for the greater cause of our earth, and humanity.
Dr. Chris O’Connell
Regional Advisor (Ireland)
Dr Chris O’Connell is a CAROLINE Research Fellow at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. His research interests centre on alterative and sustainable models of development and their political realisation.
Chris holds a PhD in Political Science from Dublin City University. His thesis analysed the influence of civil society on the environmental and development policies of leftist presidents in Latin America. His current research is co-funded by the European Commission and the Irish Research Council, and was developed in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International. The project focuses on the relationship between and responses to climate change, environmental degradation and contemporary forms of slavery in Peru and Bolivia.
Chris is committed to engaged research and impact, and has a long history of solidarity action, in particular with communities and movements in Latin America.
Ayodele Gansallo, Esq.
Immigration Law Advisor (U.S.)
Ayodele Gansallo qualified as a Solicitor in England and Wales and is also admitted as an attorney with the New York State Bar. She has been working on Immigration and Nationality issues exclusively with non-profit organizations both here and in the U.K. for nearly thirty years. She is currently the Co-Director of Legal Services with HIAS PA and Vice-Chair to the Philadelphia Chapter of AILA.
Ms. Gansallo is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Transnational Legal Clinic and is co-author of the textbook Understanding Immigration Law and Practice.
Ms. Gansallo is also a member of the Mayor’s Commission on African and Caribbean Immigrant Affairs and a recipient of the AILA Philadelphia Chapter Matthew Baxter Mentorship Award, co-recipient of the AILA Philadelphia Chapter 2017 Pro Bono Champion Award, a recipient of SEAMAAC’s Unsung Heroine Award 2017, the Philadelphia Bar Foundation Award 2017, a recipient of the 2018 Global Woman Legal Award from the Global Woman P.E.A.C.E. Foundation and the 2018 Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Immigration Law Pro Bono Award.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
International Policy Advisor (U.S.)
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein was the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights from 2014-2018; and in 2002, he was elected the first president of the governing body of the International Criminal Court (ICC) — guiding the court’s growth in its first three years (9/2002-9/2005).
He twice served as Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York City and once as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States (2007-2010). He is currently the CEO of the International Peace Institute and the Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In 2019, he was appointed a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela.
Tasneem Siddiqui
Regional Advisor (Bangladesh)
Tasneem Siddiqui is Professor of Political Science, University of Dhaka and Founding Chair of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU).
She has extensively published on forced and voluntary migration and climate change-related migration. She led the drafting of the National Strategy for Internal Displacement in Bangladesh 2021, the Overseas Employment Policy 2006 and was a committee member that prepared the draft of the Overseas Employment and Migrants Act of 2013.
She is in the Global Editorial Board of Oxford Journal of Migration Studies and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD)
Daniel Briggs
Advisor (Spain)
Daniel Briggs is a researcher, writer and inter-disciplinary academic who studies social problems. Over the last 20 years, he has undertaken a significant amount of mixed-methods and ethnographic research into various social issues. He has also been lecturing undergraduates and postgraduates across Criminology, Law, Sociology and Social Policy for the last twelve years.
In this time, he has published over 100 books, chapters, and articles and presented at over 50 conferences worldwide. His penultimate book, which was based on two year photo-ethnographic project, titled Drugs, Crime and Life in the City Shadows (2017, Policy Press) won the Distinguished Book Award from the International Division of Criminology at the American Society of Criminology.
Daniel has recently concluded Climate Changed: Refugee Border Stories and the Business of Misery (2020, Routledge) and Researching the Covid 19 Pandemic: A Critical Blueprint for the Social Sciences (Bristol University Press, 2021).
Matthew Scott
Advisor (Sweden)
Matthew Scott is head of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden.
His work focuses on integrating social science perspectives with international legal standards to promote context-sensitive, human rights-based law, policy and practice relating to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. His primary area of expertise concerns migration and displacement in the context of disasters and climate change, on which he has published a monograph entitled Climate Change, Disasters and the Refugee Convention (CUP 2020) and an edited volume entitled Climate Change, Disasters and Internal Displacement in Asia and the Pacific: A Human Rights-Based Approach (Routledge 2021).
He is a member of the advisory committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement, a member of the editorial board of the Yearbook of International Disaster Law, and a founding member of the Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility.
Lauren Grant
Advisor (U.S.A.)
Lauren Grant holds an MA in Human Rights from the Legal Studies Department of Central European University and an International Human Rights Defender Certificate from the Foundations of Human Rights Protection in Constitutional and International Law postgraduate specialization programme. She is a graduate of the Zoryan Institute’s Genocide and Human Rights University Program, and is currently pursing an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development at SOAS University of London.
At Earth Refuge and beyond, Lauren’s research and advocacy spans the fields of climate-induced displacement, women’s, Indigenous and minority rights, violence, conflict, genocide and development. In 2022, she founded the world’s first International School on Climate Mobilities, a five-week long summer school co-hosted by Earth Refuge and the SOAS Department of Development Studies.
With thanks to Lise Rigaux for original logo and branding.
