Susan M. AKRAM

Professor Susan M. Akram is the director of the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC or Clinic) at Boston University School of Law. The IHRC Clinic provides practical experience to law students in the areas of forced migration, refugee/asylum, humanitarian, human rights litigation and advocacy at the local, national, and international levels. She has worked on issues of protracted refugee and stateless communities globally for three decades and has been advocating for refugees and displaced persons through direct representation and in the UN human rights machinery. Prof. Akram received two Fulbright Senior Scholar awards, one to Palestine in 1999-2000 to teach at al-Quds and Birzeit universities in the West Bank, and most recently to Spain in 2021-22 to teach at the University of Murcia and collaborate with UM faculty and colleagues at the NGO Fundacion Cepaim on a refugee resettlement project. Professor Akram has taught at the American University in Cairo and co-teaches an Oxford University course on Palestinian refugees both at Oxford and in the region every year (the course has been offered in Damascus, Istanbul, Amman and/or Beirut since 2011). She has degrees from the University of Michigan, Georgetown University Law Center, and Oxford University, and holds a diplome in human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has written and presented extensively on issues relating to refugees, forcibly displaced and stateless persons, immigration and human rights, with a particular focus on Palestinian refugees. Her presentations include providing expert opinions to refugee and immigration authorities, judges and parliamentarians in the EU, other European countries, Canada, and UN agencies.