Dr. Katarina Schwarz + Dr. Helen McCabe - Law Mapping, Forced Marriage and Slavery

Dr. Schwarz is the Associate Director in the Law and Policy Program and Assistant Professor of Antislavery Law and Policy at the Rights Lab. Her research interrogates the law and policy frameworks that operate at the global, regional, and domestic level to determine the elements of effective anti-slavery governance and map trends, successes, and failures in this area. To support evidence-based action in anti-slavery governance, Schwarz is currently developing and analyzing the world’s first comprehensive database of the domestic legislation and international obligations of all 193 UN Member States with regard to slavery and related forms of exploitation. In 2018, Schwarz was recognized as a Grand Dignitaire de la Cour Royale de Porto Novo of the Republic of Benin for her work on reparations, and in 2019 was the recipient of the Nottingham Institute for Policy and Engagement's Policy Impact Rising Star Award for her work on modern slavery law and policy. She sits on the Executive Committee, and is a member, of the Antislavery Early Research Association - an interdisciplinary, global network of early career and postgraduate researchers studying slavery and human trafficking. She holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham (considering the case for reparations for transatlantic enslavement in international law), as well as LLB and BA degrees from the University of Otago. Dr. Helen McCabe (Politics and International Relations) leads the Rights Lab's work on forced marriage, as part of its Law and Policy Program. Her research background includes the history of feminism and 'ideal' marriage, and she is working on a conceptual analysis and definition of forced marriage as a form of slavery today: the meaning, experience, prevalence, causes, consequences of forced and servile marriage, and how to end it. This includes work on lack of consent and the exercise of powers associated with property rights, work to map the existing legislation on forced and servile marriage globally, and an analysis of the definitions currently in use in international statues and domestic legislation. In January 2020 she became an AHRC Early Careers Researcher Leadership Fellow with a project about forced marriage and modern slavery.