Dr Daniel   Ghezelbash
Daniel
Ghezelbash
Dr

Daniel is Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney, and an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow. He is an internationally recognised scholar of international and comparative refugee and migration law. His ARC DECRA project examines fast-track asylum policies, and whether it is possible to design procedures which are both fair and efficient. He has also published widely on the way restrictive asylum policies have spread around the world. This is the topic of his book, Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He has spent time as a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.

His research transcends traditional disciplinary barriers, drawing on everything from law, computing, political science, behavioural psychology and data science.

Daniel is passionate about using technology to increase access to justice and to counter systemic discrimination and bias in the legal system. He is the co-lead of the Access to Justice and Technology Stream at the UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation. He has been involved in establishing a number of initiatives using technology to increase access to justice, including Wallumatta Legal, a not-for-profit law firm which provides low-cost legal advice to family law litigants that would otherwise be unrepresented, and the Tech4Justice Complaints Platform, which aims to harness the power of complaint making to combat systemic discrimination in Australia. He is also one of the pioneers of computational and jurimetrics approaches to studying judicial decision-making in the Australian context. In his previous role, Ghezelbash founded and directed the award winning Macquarie University Social Justice Clinic and led the Law and AI stream at the Macquarie AI-enabled Processes Research Centre. 

Daniel is a practicing refugee lawyer. He is Special Counsel at the National Justice Project, and sits on the boards of a number of not-for-profit legal centres, including Refugee Advice and Casework Services (Vice-President) and Wallumatta Legal.

Daniel regularly features and published in domestic and international media outlets on refugee, migration, access to justice and legal technology issues. In 2021, he was selected for the ABC Top 5 Humanities Media Residency.

Journal articles

Ghezelbash D; Dorostkar K, 2023, 'Understanding the Politics of Refugee Law and Policy Making: Interdisciplinary and Empirical Approaches', Journal of Refugee Studies, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead039

Carole V; Ghezelbash D; Hinterberger KF; Heckendorn Urscherler L, 2023, 'Editorial - Special Issue on Comparative Migration Law: Methods, Debates and New Frontiers', International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 7, pp. 107 - 113, https://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticletoc.php?jcode=ijmbs&year=2023&vol=7&issue=2

Ghezelbash D, 2022, 'Technology and countersurveillance: holding governments accountable for refugee externalization policies', Globalizations, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2051274

Ghezelbash D, 2022, 'Legal transfers of migration law: the case for an interdisciplinary approach', International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 7, pp. 1 - 1, http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/ijmbs.2022.10051335

Ghezelbash D; Dorostkar K; Walsh S, 2022, 'A DATA DRIVEN APPROACH TO EVALUATING AND IMPROVING JUDICIAL DECISION-MAKING: STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE JUDICIAL REVIEW OF REFUGEE CASES IN AUSTRALIA', University of New South Wales Law Journal, 45, pp. 1085 - 1123

Dastyari A; Ghezelbash D, 2021, 'Asylum at sea: The legality of shipboard refugee status determination procedures', International Journal of Refugee Law, 32, pp. 1 - 27, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/IJRL/EEZ046

Ghezelbash D, 2020, 'Hyper-Legalism and Obfuscation: How States Evade Their International Obligations towards Refugees', American Journal of Comparative Law, 68, pp. 479 - 516, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avaa019

Jefferies R; Ghezelbash D; Hirsch A, 2020, 'ASSESSING REFUGEE PROTECTION CLAIMS AT AUSTRALIAN AIRPORTS: THE GAP BETWEEN LAW, POLICY, AND PRACTICE', MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 44, pp. 162 - 211, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3746085

Ghezelbash D; Feith Tan N, 2020, 'The End of the Right to Seek Asylum? COVID-19 and the Future of Refugee Protection', International Journal of Refugee Law, 32, pp. 668 - 679, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eeab002

Newhouse G; Ghezelbash D; Whittaker A, 2020, 'The Experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participants in Australia’s Coronial Inquest System: Reflections from the Front Line', International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9, pp. 76 - 89, http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/IJCJSD.1691

Moreno-Lax V; Ghezelbash D; Klein N, 2019, 'Between life, security and rights: Framing the interdiction of 'boat migrants' in the central mediterranean and Australia', Leiden Journal of International Law, 32, pp. 715 - 740, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0922156519000451

Ghezelbash D; Moreno-Lax V; Klein N; Opeskin B, 2018, 'Securitization of Search and Rescue at Sea: The Response to Boat Migration in the Mediterranean and Offshore Australia', International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 67, pp. 315 - 351, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020589317000562

Ghezelbash D, 2017, 'LEGAL TRANSFERS of RESTRICTIVE IMMIGRATION LAWS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE', International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 66, pp. 235 - 255, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020589316000373

Ghezelbash D, 2014, 'Forces of diffusion: what drives the transfer of immigration policy and law across jurisdictions?', International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 1, pp. 139 - 139, http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/ijmbs.2014.066306

Crock M; Ghezelbash D, 2011, 'Due process and rule of law as human rights: The High Court and the "offshore" processing of asylum seekers', AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, 18, https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000213674600004&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=891bb5ab6ba270e68a29b250adbe88d1

Crock M; Ghezelbash D, 2010, 'Do loose lips bring ships? The role of policy, politics and human rights in managing unauthorised boat arrivals', Griffith Law Review, 19, pp. 238 - 287, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2010.10854676

Submissions to Government

Hirsch A; Ghezelbash D; Dorostkar K; Walsh S, 2022, Submission to Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee Inquiry: The performance and integrity of Australia’s administrative review system, , https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-AAT-Inquiry-RCOA.pdf

Ghezelbash D; Wodak S; Ross R; Dutta-Powell R; Gallagher R, 2021, Submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission Review of Judicial Impartiality, , https://www.alrc.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/29.-Macquarie-University-Behavioural-Insights-Team-Public.pdf

Book Chapters

Crock M; Ghezelbash D; Reich S; Stevens R, 2022, 'Selective Generosity: Migration Law and Policy in Australia', in Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, Springer International Publishing, pp. 99 - 139, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99508-3_2

Ghezelbash D, 2022, 'Australia’s boat push-back policy: Hyper-legalism and obfuscation in action', in Refugee Externalisation Policies: Responsibility, Legitimacy and Accountability, pp. 69 - 83, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003167273-6

Ghezelbash D, 2021, 'Fast-track, accelerated, and expedited asylum procedures as a tool of exclusion', in Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Migration, pp. 248 - 261

Ghezelbash D, 2018, 'The rise and rise of mandatory immigration detention', in Protecting Migrant Children: In Search of Best Practice, pp. 420 - 436

Crock M; Ghezelbash D, 2016, 'Secret immigration business: Policy transfers and the tyranny of deterrence theory', in The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy, pp. 617 - 638, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315613239

Ghezelbash D, 2015, 'Lessons in exclusion: Interdiction and extraterritorial processing of asylum seekers in the United States and Australia', in Exploring the Boundaries of Refugee Law: Current Protection Challenges, pp. 90 - 117, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004265585_006

Crock M; Ghezelbash D, 2013, 'Secret immigration business: Policy transfers and the tyranny of deterrence theory', in The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy, pp. 617 - 637

Reports

Gleeson M; Ghezelbash D; Pillai S, 2022, Torture and cruel treatment in Australia’s refugee protection and immigration detention regimes: Submission to the UN Committee Against Torture’s sixth periodic review of Australia, https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/20221003_HRLC_RCOA_Kaldor_Centre_Submission_Committee_Against_Torture.pdf

Books

Crock M; Bones K; Ghezelbash D; Hollands J; Kenny MA, 2020, Children and Young People in Asylum and Refugee Processes Towards Best Practice

Ghezelbash D, 2018, Refuge lost: Asylum law in an interdependent world, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108349031

Preprints

Ghezelbash D; Feith Tan N, The End of the Right to Seek Asylum? COVID-19 and the Future of Refugee Protection, , http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3689093