Asylum Research Centre (ARC), formerly Asylum Research Consultancy, was set up by Liz Williams and Stephanie Huber in 2010. It provides research, project management and training services. For further information contact Stephanie Huber.
Accurate, reliable, relevant, current, objective, traceable and transparent Country of Origin Information (COI) is central to refugee status determination in order to inform decision makers about conditions in the countries of origin of asylum applicants and to assist them in establishing objective criteria as to whether an asylum claim is well founded.
ARC’s aim is to raise standards in the production, research and use of COI and thereby contribute to improving the refugee status determination process as a whole.
ARC Foundation was incorporated as a CIO (charitable incorporated organisation) in October 2016 and was a member of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), the European Network on Statelessness and the formerly known European Asylum Support Office’s (EASO) Consultative Forum (now the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA)) offering its expertise on COI-related issues. ARC Foundation closed down in July 2022 with Asylos taking forward a number of key projects that have up to now been run by ARC Foundation or were jointly delivered by both organisations. For more information on the transfer see here.
Stephanie Huber
Founder and Director of ARC and ARC Foundation
Stephanie has provided research and advocacy on human rights and refugee issues since 2003. Prior to founding ARC she worked in a variety of roles for the Immigration Advisory Service, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw. She also volunteered at Migrant Helpline, Student Action for Refugees and Anti-Slavery International.
Stephanie has provided administrative support to the Human Rights Lawyers Association (HRLA) and research, policy and training support to Freedom from Torture, the Hungarian Helsinki Foundation, the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information (IAGCI), the Still Human Still Here Coalition, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority/Legal Ombudsman/Unbound Philanthropy and UNHCR.
She holds an MA in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Essex, a MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies and an BA (Hons) in Contemporary History with Social Sciences from the University of Sussex.
Liz Williams
Founder and former Director of ARC and ARC Foundation (Oct. 2010 – Feb. 2021). Trustee of ARC Foundation since March 2021.
For more information see the Trustees page.
Former ARC Foundation Associates included:
Ariel Plotkin
Bogdan Ghenea
Dastan Salehi
Emily Wilbourn
Jo Pettitt
Lizzy Galliver
Misha Nayak-Oliver
Natasha Tsangarides
Rachel Gasowski