The Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database team
Katarina Schwarz
Rights Lab Associate Director and Assistant Professor of
Antislavery Law and Policy, University of Nottingham
Dr Katarina Schwarz is Associate Director (Law and Policy) at the Rights Lab, and Assistant Professor of Antislavery Law and Policy in the School of Law at the University of Nottingham.
Leading the Rights Lab’s work on antislavery law and policy, Schwarz works at the interface of research and policy to deliver evidence-based guidance for antislavery action. Bringing her academic research to bear on questions of practical application, Schwarz has acted as a consultant for a variety of antislavery stakeholders, including governmental actors, inter-governmental agencies, and civil society organisations.
Dr Schwarz holds a Doctorate from the School of Law, University of Nottingham, and was recognised as Grand Dignitaire de la Cour Royale de Porto Novo, Republique du Benin, in 2018.
Jean Allain
Professor and Associated Dean (Research), Monash University Faculty of Law
Prof Jean Allain is Professor and Associated Dean (Research) within the Faculty of Law at Monash University, as well as Professor of International Law at the Wilberforce Institute (WISE) at the University of Hull, UK.
He has been, since 2008, Extraordinary Professor with the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa; and, since 2017, Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the Law School, Beijing Normal University.
Prof Allain holds a Doctorate from the Graduate Institute for International Studies, University of Geneva; during his graduate studies, he clerked for the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.From 2015-2019, Prof Allain was Special Adviser to Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest international human rights organisation.
Supporting members of the project
The Antislavery in Domestic Legislation Project is a continuing study by Jean Allain and Katarina Schwarz, initiated in 2016 with a Working Group that also included Dr Marie Lynch, Dr Amanda Kramer, Aisling Ledwith, Andrew Chisholm., and Egle Vasiliauskaite.
Since it’s inception, the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation Project has also benefitted from research assistance and administrative support from Irene Asprou, Ricardo Campanelle Pletsch, Amy Canham, Maisie Carr, Ergul Celiksoy, Megan Goodchild, Charlotte Gray, Nimo Ibrahim, Robert Potter, Dr Daniel Ogunniyi, Edoardo Vacca, and Dr Ana Valverde-Cano.
The Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database team
Helen McCabe
Rights Lab Forced Marriage Lead & Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Nottingham
Dr Helen McCabe (Politics and International Relations) leads the Rights Lab’s work on forced marriage, as part of its Law and Policy Programme. She explores the relationship between forced marriage and modern slavery from three perspectives: philosophical; legal; and that of survivors. Helen also works on questions around the prevalence of forced marriage and honour-based abuse, especially in the UK context, and how survivors can be put at the heart of the movement to end modern slavery, trafficking, forced marriage and honour-based abuse. This has involved several projects using arts-based methods, as well as co-developing tools for advocacy and ethical work with survivors. Helen’s background is in the history of political thought, as part of which she co-edits the journal Utilitas.
Hannah Baumeister
Lecturer in Law, Liverpool John Moores University
Dr Hannah Baumeister is a Lecturer in Law at Liverpool John Moores University and editor of the LMJU Student Law Journal. Her research focuses on (conflict-related) gender-based violence, its causes, consequences and ways of addressing. While her early research examined psycho-social work with survivors of war rape in the former Yugoslavia, her doctoral research centred on legal responses, analysing the politics behind the international criminalisation of war rape and forced marriage in times of armed conflict under the statute of the International Criminal Court. In 2023, Hannah won AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement to develop a comic about forced marriage to teach young teenagers about this harmful practice and support their development as allies to those at risk or already experiencing it.
Katarina Schwarz
Rights Lab Associate Director & Associate Professor of Law, University of Nottingham
Dr Katarina Schwarz leads the Rights Lab’s Law and Policy Programme. Her research interrogates the law and policy frameworks operating at the global, regional, and domestic level to determine the elements of effective anti-slavery governance and map trends, successes, and failures in this area. Katarina built on her experience creating the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database to support the development of the Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database.
Supporting members of the project
The Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation project was initiated in the AHRC-funded project lead by Dr Helen McCabe and developed in collaboration with Dr Katarina Schwarz and Dr Hannah Baumeister. The project has benefitted from research assistance from Sara Ciucci and Dishna Wilson, who contributed to review and coding of legislative provisions, drafting of country summaries, and preparation of the website.
Current members of the research team
Sara Ciucci
Rights Lab Research Associate in Antislavery Law and Policy
Sara works as part of the Rights Lab’s Law and Policy Programme conducting research on comparative laws and policies addressing modern slavery in various forms. Sara is a PhD student at the School of Law. Her PhD research explores the intersection between conflict-related sexual violence and terrorism, with a focus on the challenges and perspectives of accountability at both the national and supranational levels. More broadly, her research interests include international criminal law, criminal procedure law and human rights, with a specific focus on sexual and gender-based violence.
Dishna Wilson
Rights Lab Research Associate in Antislavery Law and Policy
Adv. Dishna Wilson works as part of the Rights Lab’s Law and Policy Programme conducting research on comparative laws and policies addressing forced marriage and human trafficking. A registered advocate in India, Dishna has over a year of experience in a well-established corporate firm. Concurrently, she is pursuing her Master of Laws (LLM) in International Commercial Law at the University of Nottingham.