Hilary is working together with colleagues at the CSEL to bring social scientific insights to bear on refugee status decision-making. She also looks forward to future such collaborations.  Hilary Evans Cameron is currently funded by Bridging Provides to bring the field of cognitive psychology to the law of evidence to improve the law and practice of Canadian refugee status decision-making.

Research interests: A former litigator, Hilary Evans Cameron represented refugee claimants for a decade and now holds a doctorate in refugee law from the University of Toronto. Her research explores fact-finding in refugee status decision-making with a focus on credibility assessment. Her recent book investigates the law that governs these kinds of judgments in Canada and internationally (Refugee Law’s Fact-finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake, Cambridge 2018). Her interdisciplinary research also looks to the social sciences – principally psychology, but also sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science – to evaluate the assumptions that guide refugee status decision-makers.