• Karen Blixens Plads 16

    2300 København S

  • Karen Blixens Plads 16, 2300 København S, 6B Bygning 6B, 6B-2-31

20042024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Short presentation

Thomas holds the first ever Danish professorship in migration and mobility law. He is Director of MOBILE - the Danish National Research Foundation's Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law. In addition, he leads the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab - pioneering interdisciplinary research in computer science and migration law. He received his PhD (in international law) from Aarhus University, MSc (in refugee studies) from the University of Oxford and MA (in political science) from the University of Copenhagen. He has won multiple Danish and international awards for his research and communication - most recently the Danish Elite Researcher Award (EliteForsk prisen).

His research focuses on Nordic and international mobility law, refugee and migration law, data-driven legal methods and international legal theory. He is author or editor of several books, including Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control (Cambridge University Press, 2011, recipient of the 2013 KG Idman Award for best monograph in international law), The Changing Practices of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Tracing the Roles of Soft Law in Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2016); The Power of Legality: International Law and its Practices (Cambridge University Press 2016); Human Rights and the Dark Side of Globalisation (Routledge, 2016) Protecting the Rights of Others (DJØF, 2013), The Migration Industry: The Commercialisation of International Migration (Routledge, 2013), and Sovereignty Games: Instrumentalizing State Sovereignty in Europe and Beyond (Palgrave, 2008).

Thomas is a regular commentator on asylum and immigration matters in Danish and international media. He has consulted for a number of international organisations, governments and NGOs, and previously served as member of the Danish Refugee Appeals Board.

Thomas is PI on several ongoing research projects funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, NordForsk, Villum Foundation, Volkswagen Stifftung, European Commission, Wallenberg Foundation and UCPH-DATA+.

H-index = 27; i10-index = 45, based on 3346 citations (Google Scholar, January 2024). Google Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/yjmrogpn

VIDEOS:

Introduction to the research at the MOBILE Center of Excellence

EliteForsk profile presentation, Danish Council for Independent Research

Lecture on "refugee crisis" at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences

CMS Migration series: “The End of the Deterrence Paradigm and Future Directions for Global Refugee Studies”

Science & Cocktails Lecture: “The Refugee Crisis: Facts, numbers and solutions”

KEYWORDS: human mobility, migration, refugees, legal theory, law and politics

External positions

Chairperson, Nordic Institute for Migration, Nordic Institute for Migration

2022 → …

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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