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Diletta Lauro is a DPhil Candidate affiliated to the Refugee Studies Centre. Her doctoral research explores the ethical and political controversies raised by the state practice of deportation by looking at civil society contestations of deportation. Focusing on the United Kingdom, this research traces the historical evolution of anti-deportation activism from the late 1970s until 2016. Her research aims to contribute to theoretical debates on the ethics of migration and boundaries of state membership from an empirically informed, non-ideal, contextual and bottom up perspective.
This research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) UK.
Diletta holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations with a specialization in Political Philosophy from the University of St Andrews and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.
Outside academia, she has conducted policy-oriented research. She consulted for the Overseas Development Institute on the drivers of irregular migration to Europe and reporting to the UN Special Representative on International Migration on the Global Compact for Migration’s ‘UK Civil Society Consultation Event’.
She organised and chaired various community engagements events, linking academics with civil society activists, NGOs and refugees. For example: in 2016, she co-organised the two-day conference ‘From Fortress Europe to Sanctuary Europe: A Movement for Inclusive Asylum’, organised by the Refugee Studies Centre, the British Red Cross and City of Sanctuary. In Trinity 2018, she co-convened a Seminar Series on The Ethics and Politics of Borders at Linacre College.
