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

Forced migration (asylum, refugee law, forced migration and refugee studies); refugee law and policy in the UK; durable solutions policy (particularly repatriation); law of humanitarian access, humanitarian aid and cross-border assistance; transitional justice and peacebuilding; land ownership and governance; law and community. 

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

Kirsten McConnachie is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of East Anglia and is Director of Research for the School of Law. She was the Faculty of Social Sciences Associate Dean for Postgraduate Research at UEA from 2022-2025.

Kirsten 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's research approach work is socio-legal and interdisciplinary, with strong relationships to anthropology and development studies. Her current research projects include work on humanitarian access and cross-border assistance and on refugee law and lawyers in the UK. She has broad research interests are in conflict and forced migration, with a recurring theoretical focus on legal pluralism, informalism and governance beyond the state. She has published in areas including UK and international refugee law; governance by armed groups; the history and management of refugee camps; non-state justice systems; legal anthropology; forced migration in southeast Asia; the role of victims in transitional justice; and constitutional reform. 

Her research is qualitiative and empirical and has included extended periods of ethnographic fieldwork with refugees in camps and cities in Thailand, Malaysia and India as well as shorter periods of fieldwork in fifteen contexts of conflict and displacement. 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 British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, AHRC, John Fell Fund, Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Emslie Horniman Trust. She is currently leading a British Academy funded project on humanitarian aid to IDPs and evidence-informed policymaking, including extensive engagement with policymakers in the UK and in southeast Asia. 

Kirsten is a series editor for Berghahn's series in Forced Migration , an editorial board member of the Journal of Human Rights Practice and Social and Legal Studies, and a former editorial board member of the International Journal of Refugee Law. She has reviewed grants for many major funders and has been a panel member of the Research Council of Finland's panel on Law, Rights and Governance and of the UKRI Talent Panel College.

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: Kathy Win and recently completed Bo Bottomley (June 2026), Connie Hodgkinson Lahiff (2025), Moe Suzuki (2023).