A presentation by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Director of MOBILE - the Danish National Research Foundation's Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the "Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees" cluster hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin.
As refugee law practice enters the world of data, it is time to take stock as to what refugee law research can gain from technological developments. This presentation provides an outline for a computationally driven research agenda to tackle refugee status determination variations as a recalcitrant puzzle of refugee law. It first outlines how the growing field of computational law may be canvassed to conduct legal research in refugee studies at a greater empirical scale than traditional legal methods. It then turns to exemplify the empirical purchase of a data-driven approach to refugee law through an analysis of the Danish Refugee Appeal Board’s asylum case law and outlines methods for comparison with datasets from Australia, Canada, and the United States. It also covers the data politics arising from a turn to digital methods, and how these can be confronted through insights from critical data studies and reflexive research practices.
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen holds the first-ever Danish professorship in migration and mobility law. He is the Director of MOBILE - the Danish National Research Foundation's Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law. In addition, he leads the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab - pioneering interdisciplinary research in computer science and migration law. He received his PhD (in international law) from Aarhus University, MSc (in refugee studies) from the University of Oxford and MA (in political science) from the University of Copenhagen. He has won multiple Danish and international awards for his research and communication - most recently the Danish Elite Researcher Award (EliteForsk prisen).
His research focuses on Nordic and international mobility law, refugee and migration law, data-driven legal methods and international legal theory. He is the author or editor of several books. Thomas is PI on several ongoing research projects funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, NordForsk, Villum Foundation, Volkswagen Stiftung, European Commission, Wallenberg Foundation and UCPH-DATA+.
The 2025 spring semester colloquium is co-hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the research project "AFAR: Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. This 4-year collaborative research investigates the use of new technologies in migration and asylum governance. The research colloquium is co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin. There are 28 students entitled to the certificate of colloquium.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details prior to the event. Please register here.