Gianna Eckert is a PhD student at the Law School and Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative with research interests across migration and human rights law, legal cultures and comparative law. At present, she is a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.

Gianna's research explores the boundaries of states’ deportation powers. She is particularly interested in state responses to cases of non-removability. To this end, her PhD project traces the law’s reaction to and framing of practical and legal impediments to removal and makes sense of the various laws governing the construction of non-removability. Gianna is supervised by Prof. Diego Acosta Arcarazo and Dr Kathryn Allinson.

Previously, Gianna worked as a research assistant at the University College London on an ESRC-funded project examining SOGI asylum adjudication and the role of support organisations in this context. She was awarded the runner-up prize of the Border Criminologies Master’s dissertation competition for her thesis completed for the MSc in Global Migration at the University College London.