Alumni Careers

I am currently Human Rights and Refugees Programme Assistant at the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), a year-long position based Geneva working with the UN human rights mechanisms. In this role, I have worked on a range of issues, including migrant rights, the rights of children of prisoners and the death penalty. In particular, I have engaged heavily with the process towards the development of a major new international agreement on migration, as well as more broadly with the Human Rights Council and Treaty Bodies, particularly the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

After completing the MA, I interned with the All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group (PHRG), advertised through the MA course. Here, I assisted a group of Parliamentarians to raise international human rights issues through the UK Parliament. Based in Westminster, this role was very diverse, including managing communications and assisting with advocacy on a wide range of campaigns.

The background in international human rights law gained during the MA has given me a solid understanding of the UN structures as well as legal analysis skills which have been invaluable in my current role at QUNO. More broadly the Masters gave me the theoretical knowledge needed for work in this field, as well as an insight into a wide range of human rights topics and country-specific issues.

Both the PHRG and QUNO positions are fixed term opportunities and I would recommend both very highly as ways to learn about international human rights issues and about using political institutions to effect change.

At the start of October, I began work as Refugee Project Assistant for Refugee Services of the British Red Cross in Liverpool. My role involves the organisation of emergency provision for refugees and people seeking asylum, including the delivery of maternity packs and the development of a clothing scheme. Having been involved with the British Red Cross as a volunteer for several years I feel extremely privileged to have become a full-time member of this particular humanitarian organisation. The MA at ICS provided valuable grounding in refugee law through internal and external events which are extremely useful in understanding the challenges which individuals face in the UK in my current role. The MA has also provided opportunities for academic work beyond the scope of the course. I have co-authored an article with Damien Short on the human rights implications of hydraulic fracturing in the UK for the International Journal of Human Rights, and have plans for future articles on similar topics.

After graduating I have returned to Kyrgyzstan and started working with the public foundation for development of education in rural areas of the country.  The goal of the foundation is to provide children living in remote areas of Kyrgyzstan with high quality education with easy access to IT and foreign languages.  I am responsible for international affairs and public information.  I search for possibilities of international cooperation and joint projects with foreign educational entities.

Having MA degree in Human Rights I also have started teaching International Human Rights Law course at American University of Central Asia, located in Kyrgyzstan, where I studies before MA in London.  I am also an assistant lecturer at International Humanitarian Law course required for senior Law students at the university.  The MA has helped me in deeper understanding of human rights and my role in this field.  I have chosen to continue my career in securing rights for education in my country and my studies at the School of Advanced Study have definitely inspired and prepared me for that.

After completing the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights and finishing my internship with Minority Rights Group International in London, I relocated to SE Asia to gain more human rights experience in the field. I started by conducting human rights trainings for Burmese students in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border and later moved to the Philippines to work as a Human Rights and Accountability Advisor for a small NGO responding to the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan. Afterwards, I obtained a position with EarthRights International in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a Mekong Legal Coordinator, supporting local lawyers and civil society organisations in the Mekong region to advocate against large-scale development projects having detrimental impacts to the environment and human rights of local communities.

I am currently based in London with an international NGO ClientEarth, working as a Law and Policy Advisor in the Climate & Forests team. In this role, I focus on the issues relating to forest governance and community rights, particularly in the Republic of Congo. I support local civil society organisations to advocate for better forest governance, effective participation in decision-making processes and respect for community rights.

Having a background in law, I had some grasp of human rights issues before joining the course, however, the programme armed me with substantial additional theoretical and practical understanding of international human rights law, human rights theory, advocacy and research. It enabled me to seize very interesting job opportunities and to engage with human rights issues with confidence. The course ultimately played an important role in enabling me to shift my career and become a practicing human rights professional.

I am currently working as an Independent Consultant in advocacy, policy, campaigns, research and strategic partnerships, with a focus on girls’ and women’s empowerment, girls’ leadership and gender equality. Recent consultancy projects include youth advocacy work with Plan International, supporting the editing of Plan UK’s seminal State of Girls’ Rights in the UK report and project management for Mercy Corps Europe. 

I have been in Colombia for three years, working for PBI for just over two.  I have spent most of this time in a city in the North East of the country called Barrancabermeja, petrol capital of Colombia and centre of the social, economic and armed conflicts still raging in the country.  Now I am in a more coordinating role in Bogotá, the capital city of the country where I am involved in national advocacy with various entities of the Colombian government and armed forces, and constant dialogue with the diplomatic corps.  PBI is an international NGO that protects human rights defenders through non-violent physical and political accompaniment.  We accompany a huge range of human rights defenders throughout the country; lawyers, grass root organisations, journalists and communities resisting the armed conflict.  Despite their differences they are all at high risk because of the work they do defending human rights in the country and speaking out against state corruption and human rights abuse.  The physical accompaniment involves literally going with human rights defenders to their various activities throughout the country to show the international support they have, and the political accompaniment involves meetings at a regional, national and international level with authorities to explain the  fundamental work human rights defenders are carrying out in the country and the importance of assuring their protection.  Colombia is experiencing an historic moment as the peace agreements between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and government have just recently been passed through the Congress and are beginning to be implemented, representing the end of a war which has lasted for over 50 years.  This transition from war to peace is hugely important but very fragile, meaning the presence of international organisations observing and commentating on the situation is of vital importance.

Throughout the Masters course I interned at the PBI London offices which was a great insight into the work in the field and provided me with the contacts I needed to be able to apply to the Colombia project.  I also wrote a paper on the interaction between human rights law and International Humanitarian Law in the Colombian context which was published by the International Journal on Human Rights during the program. The range of skills I acquired during the course have been hugely useful in my work here, especially the analytical and critical capacities strengthened in the law modules, the practical skills from the securing sections and the broader insights from the case studies we analysed in the understanding lectures and seminars. The Masters course was fundamental in developing my interest and skills and providing me with useful contacts to start my career in human rights.

During the MA and with support from the lecturers, I undertook an extremely fulfilling internship with Amnesty International where I provided research support to the America’s Program on counter-terrorism, juvenile justice, and police accountability issues. Since then, I have had experience working at Integrity House as the Development Specialist, securing significant funding to support programs that included supportive housing for women and juvenile justice-related substance abuse treatment. I also worked with The Trevor Project, the leader in the US for providing suicide prevention and crisis intervention support to LGBTQ youth, as their Foundation and Corporate Relations Manager. At The Trevor Project, I was instrumental in expanding its lifesaving programs, and as a member of the design team tasked with creating the organization’s new Southern Initiative to support LGBTQ youth in the U.S South. I have also been the Senior Associate for Foundation Relations at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) where I was responsible for advancing relationships with donors like the Ford Foundation and OSF and bringing new philanthropic support to ICTJ’s work on issues such as the crisis in Syria and the Colombia peace agreement. Currently, I work for a major hospital centre in the U.S. that provides a range of medical and community support services to New Yorkers. This includes creating and funding programs for those less fortunate, and providing medical, mental health, social, and legal services for refugees who are survivors of torture.

The multidisciplinary nature of the MA allowed me to gain insight into the various career paths I could follow while still having an impact on the human rights field. The Securing Human Rights module’s funding proposal project contributed significantly to my decision to focus on development and fundraising for important causes. I appreciated my work on the funding proposal/presentation and with my project having been focused on LGBT advocacy; it was rather gratifying that I have since been able to contribute to the advancement of LGBT rights.  In addition to enjoying my work on the funding proposal and the entire MA, I gained a newfound appreciation for grant writing to support human rights and humanitarian efforts and discovered talents that I otherwise wouldn’t have known existed. I am forever grateful to the MA for helping to inspire my career.

I was able to find work quickly after graduating, starting my previous role in October of the year that I finished the course. I had an impressive CV due to the emphasis on putting study in to practice through placements, as well as by taking up one of the internships offered within the institute, at the Human Rights Consortium.

For the last year I have been working at No Second Night Out (NSNO). NSNO provides a quick exit from the streets to new rough sleepers. My role consists of assessing the needs of an extremely wide range of people, from those who are fully capable of living independently, to those who require accommodation with 24/7 staff support due to drug, alcohol, mental health, or behavioural issues. The job is very satisfying as I have the privilege of getting to know a large number of fascinating and inspiring people, and of making highly meaningful interventions in to their lives.

After graduating from ICOM in 2012 I continued working part-time for youth homelessness charity Depaul UK, as their fundraising communications assistant. I had worked in this role whilst studying part-time, and had decided by the end of my masters that I really wanted to stay in the field of child rights. A few weeks after handing in my dissertation on the right to rehabilitation for child refugees, I was delighted to get the part-time role of Youth Engagement Assistant at international children's charity Plan UK.

I combined these two part-time charity jobs with working as a self employed poet, with a focus on human rights themes. I had worked with SAS on a series of human rights poetry events at the 2012 Bloomsbury Festival and I left my job at Depaul UK to work with the Human Rights Consortium and the Keats House Poets to co-edit and launch an anthology titled 'In Protest- 150 poems for human rights.' We had over 640 entries from all around the world, and I organised a series of performances and workshops to explore human rights poetry and promote the publication.

I currently work both as a poet and for Plan UK where I support young advocates who campaign and advise the charity. My work with Plan has taken me to Malawi to support youth groups campaigning for girls rights, and to the UN in New York where I helped youth delegates advocate for disability rights. In both of my poetry and NGO I particularly enjoy engaging young people on human rights issues and helping them raise their voice.

I work as the Coordinator for the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, a coalition of ten leading UK anti-human trafficking organisations, which is hosted by Anti-Slavery International. I began the role in November 2013, around the time that the Home Secretary introduced a draft Modern Slavery Bill, so my work to date has focused on coordinating the lobbying activities of the coalition, drafting submissions for parliamentary committees and working with legal professionals to draft an ‘alternative’ Bill to assist MPs in the scrutiny process and provide a template for amendments. Prior to this role, immediately after I graduated from the MA, I worked for Anti-Slavery International on a European project which focused specifically on human trafficking for the purpose of criminal exploitation. I carried out desk-based research, wrote briefings and reports, and organised and facilitated training in the partner countries.

My interest in human trafficking started in my teenage years when I first read a harrowing report about how young girls were being trafficked across Europe for sexual exploitation. After my undergraduate degree, I went to work voluntarily for an anti-trafficking organisation in Northern Thailand for six months and whilst there applied to do the MA course. The course was undoubtedly the catalyst for getting my first job in the sector. The research for my dissertation included undertaking interviews with several anti-trafficking experts, some of whom are now my colleagues. For my placement, I volunteered for ECPAT UK, helping to run their youth group for girls who had been trafficked into the UK. My colleagues at ECPAT notified me of job opportunities and provided me with invaluable contacts.

I would highly recommend the MA course, both for professional and personal reasons. The teaching on the course is of the highest standards; the lecturers are all recognised experts in their fields, and a well-chosen placement can provide the stepping stone into the sector. The course attracts a wide-range of people, some of whom will no doubt become your life-long friends.