ResearchAtlas

A living map of the ideas, corridors, and frameworks that animate my scholarship. My work follows people, and the norms that both enable and constrain how they move, work, and belong.

Works

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Fifteen works, all themes.

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2026

Sharenting and Child Rights in the Age of Platform Capitalism

58 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 77 (2026), with UnyimeAbasi Odong

Interrogates sharenting, the routine posting of children's images and personal narratives on social media by parents, as a matter of international legal concern, arguing it constitutes a novel form of child labour that implicates children's rights to privacy, autonomy, and dignity under international human rights law.

What it argues Proposes a child-centred model of "digital parenting accountability" grounded in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ILO instruments, and emerging digital-governance standards. Challenges reliance on parental consent as a sufficient proxy for the child's best interests where content generates revenue and enduring data traces.

Child RightsPlatform CapitalismDigital Labour

Article

2025

Accommodating Claims from Vulnerable Refugee Claimants in the Refugee Hearing: The Canadian Example

LeBoeuf et al. (eds), Between Protection and Harm (IMISCOE / Springer, 2025) 189, with Nakache, Purkey & Yousuf

Examines how Canadian refugee decision-makers, particularly the Immigration and Refugee Board, accommodate vulnerable claimants in the hearing process, tracing the evolution of Chairperson's Guidelines and their limits.

What it argues Offers a granular account of what "accommodation" means in practice, and identifies where procedural adaptation falls short of substantive protection.

Refugee LawCanadaIRB Guidelines

Book Chapter

Migrant in Situations of Vulnerability

Chetail, Chotinkul & Raimondo (eds), Elgar Concise Encyclopaedia of Migration & Asylum Law (Edward Elgar, 2025) 307, with Delphine Nakache

A reference entry examining how international instruments, the Global Compact for Migration, the Global Compact on Refugees, the New York Declaration, use and operationalise the concept of "vulnerability" in the governance of mobility.

What it argues Maps the contested scope of vulnerability across global and regional instruments, showing how the concept remains vague even as it becomes increasingly central to protection regimes.

VulnerabilityGlobal CompactSoft Law

Encyclopaedia

Musings on "Internationality": Cultural Particularities in Democratic Discourse in Africa

119 AJIL Unbound 236 (2025)

Argues that Africa's engagement with democracy and the law that promotes it has been not merely reactive but normatively generative, drawing from local traditions, continental solidarities, and hybrid legal innovations.

What it argues Develops a conceptual distinction between a "law of democracy" (emerging organically through local practice and pluralism) and a "law on democracy" (projected from dominant political centres through treaties and monitoring mechanisms).

Pan-AfricanismDemocracyTWAIL

Article

2024

Late Breaking Panel: The African Contribution to the International Law of Democracy

118:1 Proc. ASIL Ann. Mtg. 73 (2024), with Egboka, Fomunyoh, Okafor & Niyo

A panel at the American Society of International Law's 2024 Annual Meeting redirecting discussion away from what international law demands of African states toward the pivotal role African institutions play in forging democratic frameworks.

What it argues My remarks frame Africa as a site of normative production rather than deficiency, with implications for how global democracy-promotion regimes should be designed.

DemocracyAfrican UnionInternational Law

Proceedings

Transnational Labour Mobility and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: A TWAIL Analysis

5 TWAIL Review 120 (2024)

Examines Objective 5 of the Global Compact for Migration, flexibility in regular pathways for labour mobility, and argues that the GCM's presentation as a consensus, value-neutral document in fact normalises sovereignty, border security, and economic demands in ways that entrench a racialised hierarchy of international norms.

What it argues Advances a TWAIL way of thinking about transnational labour mobility that centres the global south and its workers, rather than treating them as objects of northern policy concern.

TWAILGCMLabour Mobility

Article

Unveiling Nuances, Empowering Voices, and Challenging Dichotomies in South-South Migration Dynamics

Book review of Olakpe, South-South Migrations and the Law from Below, Afronomics Blog (2024)

A review of Olakpe's scholarly contribution to South-South migration discourse, a book that applies TWAIL and "law from below" through case studies in Nigeria and China to challenge dominant South-North migration paradigms.

What it argues Situates the monograph within broader TWAIL scholarship and highlights its methodological innovation in using legal ethnographies to centre marginalised subaltern communities.

South-South MigrationTWAILLaw from Below

Book Review

2023

Migrant Vulnerability in the Canadian Protection Regime: The View of Migrants, Public Servants and On-the-Ground Practitioners

VULNER Policy Brief, May 2023, with Nakache, Crépeau, Purkey, Soennecken, Hajjar, Tanotra & Yusuf

Distils the VULNER research findings into actionable policy recommendations for Canadian decision-makers and practitioners.

What it argues Recommends priority processing for vulnerable claimants, addressing backlogs through increased staffing, and systemic redesign to prevent the protection regime itself from manufacturing vulnerability.

PolicyCanadaRecommendations

Policy Brief

The Maputo Protocol: Empowering Women through Progressive Labour Mobility Rights

Newsletter of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, African Commission on Human & Peoples' Rights (Oct 2023)

A contribution to the Newsletter of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, examining how the Maputo Protocol empowers women through progressive labour-mobility rights within the African human-rights system.

What it argues Surfaces the Maputo Protocol's under-discussed labour-mobility dimensions and the implications for women's economic rights across the continent.

Maputo ProtocolWomen\'s RightsACHPR

Newsletter

2022

Article 14, Contribution to the Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, Supplement No. XII (2016–2020)

UN Office of Legal Affairs, Spring 2022

A contribution to the UN's Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, the authoritative record of how UN bodies have interpreted and applied the UN Charter, for Article 14, covering the 2016–2020 period.

What it argues Adds to the official doctrinal record of how UN practice has evolved on the peaceful adjustment of situations that might impair general welfare and friendly relations among nations.

UN PracticeInternational LawArticle 14

Article

Migrant Vulnerability in the Canadian Protection System: The View of Migrants, Public Servants and On-the-Ground Practitioners

VULNER Research Report 2 (Univ. of Ottawa / McGill / York, November 2022), with Nakache, Purkey, Anderson, Tanotra, Soennecken, Hajjar, Yousuf & Crépeau

A 66-page empirical research report funded by SSHRC/CRSH and the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, drawing on interviews with migrants, civil servants at IRCC, members of the IRB, and community-based practitioners across Canada.

What it argues Demonstrates that the Canadian protection regime itself produces and exacerbates vulnerabilities rather than merely responding to them, a finding that reframes reform priorities.

EmpiricalVULNERCanadian Protection Regime

Report

2021

Twists & Swirls: Caregiving & Sexualization, Femininity Construct in Gendered Migration from Nigeria to Italy

28 Ind. J. Global Leg. Stud. 81 (2021)

Examines the Nigeria-to-Italy migration corridor through the twin constructs of caregiving and sexualisation, showing how gender is simultaneously a driver, a pathway, and a destination of transnational labour mobility.

What it argues Theorises "doing gender" across borders: how women migrants negotiate remittance economies, care work, and sex work within frameworks that both enable and exploit feminised labour.

GenderNigeria–ItalyCare Work

Article

VULNER Policy Brief: Canada

VULNER Policy Brief, September 2021, with Nakache, Soennecken, Anderson, Crépeau, Frenyo, Mahmood, Purkey & Tanotra

Initial policy findings from the VULNER Canada team, framing the research agenda and early insights on how vulnerability is understood and applied in the Canadian context.

What it argues Sets the empirical and conceptual groundwork on which subsequent VULNER outputs build.

PolicyCanadaEarly Findings

Policy Brief

2020

Nomad Visas and Economic Resurgence: Lessons from Estonia

Lawyer's Daily, 26 June 2020

A practitioner-oriented analysis of Estonia's Digital Nomad Visa regime, published shortly after Estonia's Parliament approved amendments to its Alien Act in June 2020, and what it might offer Canadian immigration policy in the wake of COVID-19.

What it argues Bridges scholarly research and practice by translating a comparative law case study into concrete recommendations for Canadian economic migration reform.

Digital NomadImmigration PolicyCanada

Opinion

Women Strapped with Bombs: "Victim-Perpetrators" in the Boko Haram Insurgency, A Case of Gender Persecution

J. Int'l Crim. L. 1 (2020)

Interrogates the binary status of women coerced into being Person-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (PBIEDs) by Boko Haram, as victims of gender persecution (a crime against humanity) and as unwilling participants in the insurgency.

What it argues Argues that the conscription of Female Suicide Bombers rises to the scale of a crime against humanity, and analyses the scope and limits of criminal responsibility under international criminal law for women who survive detonation.

Gender PersecutionICLBoko Haram

Article