Dr Sidonia Lucia Kula

Lucia Kula is senior lecturer in Law and Gender at SOAS, University of London and an international human rights lawyer. My research adopts a transdisciplinary and decolonial approach to the interrogation of law, borders, gendered violence, and decolonising academia. My work as a former refugee from Angola is informed by critical reflections on how the law interacts with those most marginalised before the law and how we use (auto)ethnography to centre the lived realities of irregular migrant and refugee women within the African context and the diaspora. My work has an intersectional focus on women and gender expansive identities and the everyday lived experiences with the law and violence. I convene the LLM Law and Gender programme, and I am part of the Leadership Team for the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice at SOAS. I also convene one of our flagship undergraduate modules; Legal Systems of Asia and Africa II.  Concurrently, I maintain a distinct adjunct stream of work focused on equality, diversity, and inclusion, with a particular emphasis on race and equity within Higher Education Institutions. My contributions in this domain have been instrumental in conceptualising and delivering race equity work and decolonising strategies across several institutions, including Nottingham Trent University, the University of Chester, University of Essex, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Bath Spa University, University of Durham, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and more. I leverage my commitment for systemic change working with partners such as the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), JASS Associates, Ondjango Feminista, Pakhuis de Zwijger, and more. In this capacity I also serve as the chair of the board of trustees for the South London Refugee Association (SLRA) and as a member of the Independent Monitoring Board, monitoring standards of fairness, safety, and decency in local prisons and immigration detention facilities.

International Law, Gender studies, Gender Based Violence, Conflict-related Sexual Violence, Queering Law, Refugee Law, Angola, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Borders and Borderlands, Decolonising scholarship, Socio-legal studies