Dr Angela Sherwood, PhD (Queen Mary), MSc (Oxford) BA (University of Vermont)

Profile

Angela Sherwood is a Lecturer in Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London. She writes on state violence, humanitarian power, mobility and displacement, with a particular focus on post-disaster land struggles and the possibilities of resistance. Her work has appeared in the State Crime Journal and the Journal of Refugee Studies, and in several edited collections on state crime, displacement, and migration.

Angela’s most recent research develops the concept of humanitarian crime in Haiti, drawing on critical criminology and Marxist and decolonial social theory to examine how the state-capital-humanitarian nexus produces violence and dispossession. This research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is the subject of a forthcoming monograph, Humanitarian Crime: Disasters, Dispossession, and Resistance in Port-au-Prince.

Angela is also a member of the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) and Co-Director of Queen Mary’s Centre for Climate Clime and Climate Justice (CCCCJ). Through the Centre, she works on projects examining the criminalisation of climate defenders and on state violence and environmental destruction in West Papua.

Before Queen Mary, Angela was a postdoctoral research fellow on the ERC-funded project Refugees are Migrants: Refugee Mobility, Recognition and Rights, led by Cathryn Costello at the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre (RSC). She has also worked at Amnesty International as a researcher and advisor on refugee and migrants’ rights, and at the International Organization for Migration.

Undergraduate Teaching

Angela currently teaches:

• Law6173 Global Criminology: Global Crime, Punishment, and Justice.
• Law4006 Land Law.

Postgraduate Teaching

Angela currently teaches:

• SOLM262 Climate Justice.

Research

Angela’s research is interdisciplinary, combining insights from critical criminology, socio-legal studies, postcolonial studies, and critical migration and humanitarian studies. In her research on humanitarian crime, she has explored humanitarianism as an unexamined site of state power and institutional violence within the criminological field. Although humanitarian organisations are increasingly entangled in regimes of policing, securitisation, and militarised disaster reconstruction, they have not attracted significant attention in crimes of the powerful research. The aim of Angela’s work has been to show how conceptual frameworks of social harm and state crime, in conversation with critical social theory, can generate other ways of thinking about some of the dehumanising, coercive, and predatory practices of humanitarian organisations that are often normalised and overlooked.

Haiti, and its imperial and colonial histories of humanitarian intervention, has been the primary point of departure for Angela’s work on humanitarian crime. Through this lens, Angela has interrogated both violations of international norms by state and humanitarian actors, and Haitian civil society's own labelling of global humanitarianism as a ‘project of death,’ a form of theft, and an integral part of a wider system of state-imperial criminality. In particular, Angela has investigated the property-based practices of humanitarian actors and their violent outcomes of land dispossession.

Angela’s focus on the criminogenic dimensions of humanitarian intervention parallels her other work on the legal obligations and accountability of international organisations (IOs), and deeper questions about the role of IOs in reproducing colonial and capitalist social relations. Her recently co-edited volume with Cathryn Costello and Megan Bradley, IOM Unbound? Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion brings together scholars of law and politics to critically examine the IOM's practices in global migration governance, its obligations under different bodies of law, and its accountability gaps.

Angela’s latest work extends these trajectories, asking questions related to land justice and cultural practices of freedom and resistance. She is currently researching disaster mobility and fugitive placemaking in the Caribbean, exploring how historically dispossessed and displaced communities produce spaces of autonomy within and against colonial structures.

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

• Sherwood, Humanitarian Crime: Disasters, Dispossession, and Resistance in Port-au-Prince (Routledge 2026).
• Bradley, C. Costello, & A. Sherwood, IOM Unbound? Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion (Cambridge University Press 2023).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• Saunders, A. Sherwood, & D. Whyte (2024) Autonomy over Life: The Struggle against Capitalist Development in West Papua State Crime Journal Vol 13 (2).
• Angela Sherwood, Isabelle Lemay, and Cathryn Costello, ‘IOM’s Immigration Detention Practices and Policies: Human Rights, Positive Obligations and Humanitarian Duties’ in Bradley, M., Costello, C. and Sherwood, A.(eds) IOM Unbound? Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion (Forthcoming 2022, Cambridge University Press).
• Angela Sherwood and Megan Bradley, ‘Holding IOM to Account: The Role of International Advocacy NGOs,’ in Bradley, M., Costello, C. and Sherwood, A.(eds) IOM Unbound? Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion (Forthcoming 2022, Cambridge University Press).
• Angela Sherwood, “Grabbing’ Solutions: Internal Displacement and Post-Disaster Land Occupations in Haiti,” in Bradley, M., Milner, J. and Peruniak, B. (eds): Refugees’ Roles in Resolving Displacement and Building Peace: Beyond Beneficiaries (pp. 167-186). Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2019.
• Angela Sherwood, Laura Smits and Anna Konotchick, “Haiti’s Disaster Urbanisms: The Emerging City of Canaan,” in Rocco, R. and van Ballegooijen, J. (eds): The Routledge Handbook of Informal Urbanization (pp. 226-237). Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2019.
• Megan Bradley and Angela Sherwood, “Addressing and Resolving Internal Displacement: Reflections on a Soft Law Success Story,” in Cerone, J., Gammeltoft-Hansen, T. and Lagoutte, S. (eds): Tracing the Roles of Soft Law in Human Rights (pp. 155-182). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Megan Bradley, Angela Sherwood, Lorenza Rossi, Rufa Guiam, and Bradley Mellicker, “Researching the Resolution of Post-Disaster Displacement: Reflections from Haiti and the Philippines.” Journal of Refugee Studies, 30(3) 2016: 363-386.
• Penny Green, Kristian Lasslett and Angela Sherwood, “Enclosing the Commons: Predatory Capital and Forced Evictions in Papua New Guinea and Burma,” in Pickering, S. (ed): The Routledge Handbook on Migration and Crime (pp.329-350). Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2014.

Authored Reports

• Angela Sherwood, Cathryn Costello, Emile McDonnell, ‘The Displacement Regime Complex: Reform for Protection’ (2021) Background Paper for the preparation of the seventh edition of UNHCR’s The State of the World’s Forcibly Displaced
• Angela Sherwood. Unpaid and Abandoned: The Abuse of Mercury Mena Workers. Amnesty International, 2018.
• Angela Sherwood. The Debt Trap: How Business and Government Undermine Nepali Migrants’ Efforts to Escape Poverty. Amnesty International, 2017.
• Angela Sherwood. Turning People into Profits. Amnesty International, 2017.
• Angela Sherwood, Megan Bradley, Lorenza Rossi, Rufa Guiam, and Bradley Mellicker, Resolving Post-Disaster Displacement: Insights from the Philippines. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution and the International Organization for Migration, 2015.
• Angela Sherwood, Megan Bradley, Lorenza Rossi, Rosalia Gitau, and Bradley Mellicker, Supporting Durable Solutions to Urban, Post-Disaster Displacement: Challenges and Opportunities in Haiti. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution and the International Organization for Migration, 2014.

Supervision

Angela is interested in supervising prospective doctoral candidates in the fields of critical criminology, state crime, green crime/ecocide, border criminology, migration and humanitarian governance, and the criminalisation of social movements.

Angela currently supervises four doctoral students, Nicolás Pablo Rodríguez Rioseco, Laura Disley, Monika Sobiecki, and Paddy Friend.

Public Engagement

Angela is co-director of Queen Mary’s Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, a research centre that aims to support social movements confronting ecological harm and state repression. Through the Centre, she co-edits a blog series and convenes public events to discuss pressing matters of climate justice, land justice, the criminalisation of activists and social movements, and resistance to ecological destruction. Angela is also an Executive Board Member of the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), and an Executive Committee Member of the Haiti Support Group.

Recent Media/Press

• Video, The International Organization for Migration in Forced Migration, Oxford Explains: Forced Migration series (2026).
• Blog, USAID’s Legacy of Ecological Imperialism, Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice (2025).
• Podcast, IOM in an Era of Expansion, New Books Network: Politics and Law (2024)
• Podcast, Climate Justice: What Can Lawyers Do? Reimagine Law series (2024).
• Blog, A New Generation of Law Students Takes on Climate Justice, Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice (2024).
• Podcast, IOM Unbound? The International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion, UC Berkeley Law: Borderlines series (2023).
• Blog, The Devastating Cost of Humanitarian Intervention in Haiti, Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice (2023).
• Op-Ed, Police Powers and Climate Protesters, The Times (2023).
• Op-Ed, Haiti: Why 2021 is and is not 2010, Al-Jazeera (2021).

Recent Public Events

• The Line We Crossed (2026), Film Screening on the Criminalisation of Climate Defenders, BLOC Cinema.
• Innovating Justice – Ecocide and the Future of Climate Law, Queen Mary Pro Bono Society (2026).
• Strategic Climate Litigation: Can It Challenge the Status Quo? Legal Voices for the Future (2023).
• Colonial Violence and Imperial Legacies in Haiti, London Migration Film Festival (2023).