Esteemed human rights researcher to visit Edge Hill

A LEADING expert in human rights, social policy and criminology has received a British Academy Visiting Fellowship and will spend three months at Edge Hill University working on a research project.

Prof Witold Klaus, head of the department of criminology at the Institute of Law Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, will be working on project titled Polish Migrants Deported from the UK, as well as looking to develop new research collaborations.

He will be progressing the project in co-operation with Dr Agnieszka Martynowicz, lecturer in criminology at Edge Hill.

As part of his fellowship, Prof Klaus will also be developing a collaboration with Edge Hill’s inter-departmental Migration Working Group.

British Academy Visiting Fellowships provide outstanding academics based in any country overseas – and active at any career stage – with the opportunity to work at a UK higher education or other research institution of their choice for up to six months.

This year the British Academy, an independent fellowship of world-leading scholars and researchers, and a funding body for research, nationally and internationally, has awarded 89 Visiting Fellowships of up to £33,000 to academics of 34 different nations.

Visiting Fellowships are supported by the Government’s Rutherford Fund.

Lawyer and criminologist, Witold Klaus is president of the board of the Association for Legal Intervention and secretary of the board of the Polish Society of Criminology.

In 2008 he was awarded a Social Nobel Prize by Ashoka Foundation and in 2009 won second prize for the best legal PhD thesis awarded by one of the leading Polish legal journals, State and Law.

He is also author and editor of publications on human rights, refugee and foreigner rights, criminology, restorative justice and discrimination.