Dr Sara Razai

Biography

Dr Sara Razai joined the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law in 2020 as a Research Fellow in Judicial Independence and Constitutional Transitions. An expert in empirical research on the judiciary, her research has fed into policy-making and she has provided different actors and stakeholders with policy recommendations and programmatic responses at national and international levels. At the Bingham Centre, Sara is working on the research project Special Processes for the Reassessment and Removal of Judges in the Context of Constitutional Transitions  funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is also part-time Programme Director of the Institut d'Études sur le Droit et la Justice dans les Sociétés Arabes  in Paris.

Sara holds at PhD in Law from UCL Laws. Her doctoral thesis, was to understand how institutional, functional and behavioural characteristics influence judicial role perceptions in Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi-Arabia. As part of her research, Sara conducted three studies where she surveyed, interviewed and profiled over 180 judges. The survey, thought to be the first of Arab judges, investigated judicial role conceptions, judges' attitudes to law, politics and international norms on the judiciary. Her doctoral research was supported by UCL Law and UCL-Yale research awards.

Prior to joining Bingham Centre, Sara was a Research Fellow at the UCL Judicial Institute and Post-doctoral research fellow at Birkbeck School of Law.