Kirsten McConnachie is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of East Anglia and Associate Dean for Postgraduate Research in the Faculty of Social Science. She is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, a Senior Research Associate of the University of London's Refugee Law Initiative, and a trustee of the UK Socio-Legal Studies Association. 

Kirsten joined UEA in April 2018, having previously held posts at the University of Warwick (Assistant Professor, 2015- 2018), University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre (Junior Research Fellow, 2012-2015), and the University of Edinburgh (Research Fellow 2011-2012). 

Her primary area of teaching and research is refugee law (and more generally, forced migration studies), from a socio-legal and interdisciplinary perspective. She has published in areas including governance by armed groups; the history and management of refugee camps; legal pluralism and non-state justice systems; legal anthropology and informal governance; forced migration in southeast Asia; the role of victims in transitional justice; and constitutional reform.

She has carried out extensive fieldwork in southeast Asia, including with Karen refugees living in camps in Thailand and with ethnic Chin refugees in Malaysia and India. Her book, Governing Refugees (Routledge 2014), analysed governance and justice in refugee camps in Thailand and was awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association early career book prize. 

Kirsten's research has been funded by major funders including the Leverhulme Trust, AHRC, John Fell Fund, Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Emslie Horniman Trust. In addition to work in refugee and forced migration studies, she is currently working on a Leverhulme-funded socio-legal study of community land ownership in Scotland. 

Kirsten is a series editor for Berghahn's series in Forced Migration , an editorial board member of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, International Journal of Refugee Law and Social and Legal Studies, and a member of the UKRI Talent Panel College (for early career fellowships).

She regularly presents her work at invited seminars in the UK and internationally, and in 2022 delivered the annual Elizabeth Colson lecture at the University of Oxford. She has been interviewed by media as an expert on refugee issues and on Burma/Myanmar (including BBC World Service, BBC Asian News Service, Channel News Asia, France News 24 and Al-Jazeera) and written for online media including The Conversation, openDemocracy, The Diplomat, Lacuna, and The Muslim Debate.

Current PhD students: Connie Hodgkinson Lahiff; Bo Bottomley

Refugee studies/refugee law; socio-legal studies; legal anthropology, informal justice systems and legal pluralism; transitional justice; qualitative research methods and ethnography.  

Associate Dean of Postgraduate Research, Social Sciences Faculty

Forced migration (asylum, refugee law, forced migration and refugee studies); forced migration in South and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, India); refugee law and policy in the UK; transitional justice and peacebuilding; land ownership and governance; law and community. 

Methodologically: socio-legal approaches to law; qualitative and ethnographic research methods.