Biography
Professor David James Cantor is the founding Director of the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Trained originally as a social anthropologist, Professor Cantor worked as a practitioner in the legal field during the 2000s for organisations such as the Refugee Legal Centre, a London-based public law centre where he litigated refugee and human rights cases until 2007, and UNHCR. In a consultancy capacity, he has advised, trained and undertaken research for a range of governments mostly from the global south, as well as numerous INGOs and northern and southern NGOs. During 2016–2017, Professor Cantor worked part-time as Senior Advisor to the UNHCR Americas Bureau.
Professor Cantor’s research has a strong legal and policy focus. Current and past topics include: returns by refugees and IDPs; reparations for displacement; IDP protection during armed conflict and organised criminal violence; human mobility in disasters linked to natural hazards; refugee law and its relationship to human rights law, IHL and IDP law. He has a long-standing connection with Latin America, where he has carried out fieldwork since 1998 in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico. Since completing his PhD in 2010, he has published five books, two special issues and over 30 journal articles and book chapters.
Whilst running the RLI, Professor Cantor has organised over 100 conferences, workshops and seminars, founded the International Refugee Law book series (where he remains editor) and the distance-learning MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies. He has led international collaborations and secured competitive research funding for almost 20 projects as PI or Co-I (including AHRC, ESRC, GCRF, Leverhulme Trust). He was selected as an ESRC Future Research Leader in 2012 and sits on the Research Council Peer Review College. In 2017–2018, he won the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Award for Research Project of the Year (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences).
Keynote Presentation (2019) | Why Do We Protect Refugees?
