Staff profile

Abraham is a PhD researcher, a co-deputy director of the Centre for Law and Global Justice at Durham University, and a part-time tutor. He holds an LLB (first-class honours) from the University of Bradford, where he got admitted under the Bradford University Sanctuary Scholarship programme. He has also been a Longford Trust scholar since 2018. He obtained an LLM (International Law and Governance) from Durham University and commenced his PhD in November 2020. Abraham actively campaigns for LGBTQ and migrants’ welfare, rights, and justice and has aided vulnerable and marginalised asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants in the North-East region of England on a diverse range of issues, including access to legal advice and representation which seeks to address systemic issues within the asylum application process in the UK. He sits on the Policy Council of Liberty (UK’s foremost human rights organisation), is a trustee of regional and local asylum seekers and refugees’ groups, including Friends of Drop-In (FODI Sunderland), and has been the vice-chair of Sunderland City of Sanctuary since 2015. In 2017, he co-founded the Sunderland Rainbow Sanctuary Seekers group (SURASS) which provides comprehensive support to LGBTQ asylum seekers within the Northeast. Abraham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2021, and he is a Research Affiliate with the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. He is also a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, Law and Society Association of America, and the Refugee Council Advocacy Network.

Current Research

Abraham’s PhD research is supervised by Professor Thom Brooks and Associate Professor Tufyal Choudhury. It is titled ‘No Safe Passage to Safety: The need for a review of the United Nation’s definition of a Refugee’. In this research, Abraham will investigate whether there is a contributory relationship between the alienage clause (being outside the country of nationality or habitual residence) in the current Convention definition of a refugee and the deaths of fleeing migrants. This investigation will be done by examining the alienage clause and whether it has, in any way, prohibited safe passages for fleeing refugees.

Research Groups

• Durham Human Rights Centre
• Law and Global Justice at Durham

Teaching Areas

• Land Law
• Trusts Law

• International human rights law
• The legal protection of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants
• Migration, borders, regional integration
• Forced displacement, violence, humanitarian regimes and refugee camps, mainly in the African context