Elif Kuskonmaz

Dr Elif Kuskonmaz is Lecturer in Law at Essex Law School, University of Essex, where her work focuses on the intersection of human-rights law, data-protection law and security studies. A qualified Turkish lawyer and Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, she previously held posts as Senior Lecturer and Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth (2018-2023) and served as Graduate Teaching Assistant at Queen Mary University of London while completing her doctorate.

Education

• PhD in Law – Queen Mary University of London
• LLM in Public International Law – Queen Mary University of London
• Master’s Degree in Public Law – Istanbul University
• Bachelor of Law – Istanbul University

Research Interests

Dr Kuskonmaz explores how states’ surveillance practices, especially in counter-terrorism and migration management, interact with fundamental rights to privacy and data protection. Her current projects examine the digitalisation of border controls, the privatisation of surveillance infrastructures, and the governance of trans-national data transfers, always with an eye to the oversight and accountability mechanisms required under EU and international human-rights law.

Publication Landscape

Across more than twenty-five refereed articles, book chapters, policy reports and monographs since 2014, she has consistently interrogated the legal limits of large-scale surveillance. Recurring themes include Passenger Name Records (PNR), biometric and behavioural mass surveillance, EU-US data-sharing agreements, and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU. Her 2021 monograph Privacy and Border Controls in the Fight against Terrorism synthesises a decade of research on these topics.

Scientific Awards & Recognition

• Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (Advance HE)

Policy Engagement & Funding

She has provided expert legal advice to the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, OSCE and UNHCR, and has been commissioned for studies by the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament. Visiting-research affiliations include Georgetown University Law Center (2018) and Bocconi University (2022).

Labs & Teams

At Essex Law School she is available to supervise doctoral researchers working in human-rights law, privacy & data protection, and migration & border studies, and participates in the School’s broader Human Rights Centre networks.