The ERC Starting Grant is aimed at researchers at the beginning of their careers and is awarded solely on the basis of scientific excellence. Following evaluation by fellow researchers and in tough competition, these researchers and their projects have been ranked among the very best in Europe. In total, the European Union, through the European Research Council, is awarding EUR 705 million to 421 researchers across Europe.
Eleni Karageorgiou is currently a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. She holds a PhD in Public International Law from the Faculty of Law at Lund University and continues to collaborate closely with several of the Faculty's researchers in the field of human rights. Karageorgiou has been awarded the grant for her project CONPLEX: The Consultancy Complex: Inside the Black Box of Private Migration and Asylum Governance.
The project awarded an ERC Starting Grant is CONPLEX, a five-year project examining the growing role of private consultancy firms in migration and asylum governance.
What do you hope to achieve?
I hope the project will shed light on an aspect of migration and asylum governance that has so far received little attention in legal research. By combining legal doctrinal analysis, history and empirical research, we aim a) to document how private consultancies, through their expertise, influence decision-making in the field of migration, and b) to develop a new way of understanding the interplay between private advisory authority and law-making and enforcement. Hopefully, the findings will also have relevance in other areas of public governance, including digitalisation, welfare, climate and health.
What does receiving an ERC Starting Grant mean to you?
The ERC Starting Grant gives me a unique opportunity to build my own research team over the next five years and to develop a research agenda that I have been thinking about for a long time. It is also, of course, a wonderful recognition of the project’s idea and potential, and it provides the academic freedom to pursue ambitious questions, taking human rights and migration law research in new directions.
Eleni Karageorgious profile in Lund University Research portal
Read more about the ERC Starting Grant on Lund University's website.