Alessandra Enrico Headrington

Migration Studies (2023 cohort)

Alessandra is a DPhil candidate in Migration Studies and was awarded the Grand Union DTP ESRC Studentship. Her research interests include asylum in humanitarian contexts, policy responses to large-scale migration movements such as regularisation processes and the normative and policy challenges associated with effective integration. Her DPhil project builds on her MSc research and seeks to explore the relevance and effectiveness of asylum as a legal institution in South America in light of the emergence of other complementary legal pathways granted to Venezuelans.

Alessandra is a lawyer specialising in International human rights law and a current lecturer at PUCP’s Law School in Peru. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from the PUCP University, where she was awarded the Aristotle full scholarship of academic excellence, and an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.

She has worked as a researcher at the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at the PUCP University and later as an asylum officer at the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also has experience in humanitarian organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where she worked as a legal associate supporting the improvement of the asylum system and refugee status determination, and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Peru where she worked as a legal consultant implementing a new protection strategy and facilitating capacity building initiatives with staff and other stakeholders. Most recently, she worked as a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) on regularisation topics, evolving migration patterns, climate change impacts, and the complex legal frameworks and institutions that safeguard the rights of migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean.