Our Team

Andy is a co-founding Partner and Legal Director, responsible for supervision of legal casework.  Andy also heads our Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre.  He has an LLM in International Human Rights Law and has been working in human rights law since 2010.  He currently sits on the Law Society of Scotland’s Immigration & Asylum Sub-Committee as well as the Scottish Government’s Child Trafficking Strategy Group.

Andy is experienced in working directly with migrant children and young people, with a particular specialism in working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children and child victims of trafficking.  He has represented migrant children in the national asylum and trafficking identification procedures, the immigration and asylum tribunals, and in Judicial Reviews in the Court of Session.  He is an expert in age assessment, having successfully taken strategic litigation in this area as well as contributing to the drafting of the 2018 Scottish Government Practice Guidance on Age Assessment.  He delivers training across the UK on age assessment best practice.

Prior to this, Andy worked as a Legal Officer at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, supervising the implementation of British, Irish and Cypriot judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.  He also enjoys lecturing at the University of Glasgow, where he has taught European Human Rights Law for over 7 years.

Farida is an Associate Solicitor in our Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre.

Farida completed her traineeship within a specialist legal service at a national law centre, working with women, children and young people in asylum, immigration and human rights law. Farida’s traineeship was supported by The Legal Education Foundation through the Justice First Fellowship scheme for aspiring social justice lawyers.

Prior to her traineeship, Farida worked as a casework coordinator with British Red Cross Refugee Services for two and a half years. Farida has also previously worked for the University of Strathclyde as a tutor in Human Rights Law.

Francesca is a Associate Solicitor in our Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre.

Having graduated in 2018, she moved to Strasbourg where she worked as an intern at the office of the Special Representative on Migration and Refugees at the Council of Europe.

Francesca completed her traineeship at an immigration and asylum firm in Glasgow, where she gained experience in both asylum and human rights law, and qualified in the summer of 2021.

Her main interest lies in asylum law, focusing on gender based violence and FGM cases. She is also passionate about, and experienced in, family reunion cases, both inside and outside the Immigration Rules.

Antonia is a Senior Legal Caseworker in our Scottish Refugee and Migrant Centre and Scottish Anti-Trafficking and Exploitation Centre.

Antonia is a recent graduate of the University of Edinburgh (LLB Honours) and a past Robertson Trust Scholar.  She joined JRS as an intern in July 2020 and she continued volunteering with our Scottish Refugee and Migrant Centre throughout her final year of university.

Antonia has a keen interest in increasing access to justice for vulnerable people, with a particular interest in supporting migrants at risk of destitution and survivors of human trafficking.  During her time at university, Antonia participated in workshops on the rights of EU citizens through our StrEEt Aware collaboration with the Shelter Scotland Housing Law Service, Streetwork and the University of Edinburgh Free Legal Advice Centre.

Eeman is a is a Legal Caseworker in our Scottish Refugee and Migrant Centre and Scottish Anti-Trafficking and Exploitation Centre.

She is a recent LLM graduate in Human Rights Law whose areas of interests are refugee law, international humanitarian law and human rights law.

She hopes to build a career in human rights, specialising in minority rights, and is most passionate about social justice causes that centre the voices of religious and ethnic minorities subjugated to xenophobic regimes. She focuses her research on the violation of fundamental human rights, including her dissertation which explored the state-led persecution of Muslims in India and Jammu-Kashmir.

Mariam is our Participation and Development Officer and she also works in collaboration with our Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre.
She is responsible for the facilitation of our Just Citizens panel, along with the development and maintenance of partnerships with other third sector and grassroots organisations.
Mariam has over six years of experience working with refugees and migrants in Greece, Austria and UK, by taking part in inclusive initiatives and projects which aim to promote the voices, needs and desires of these groups.

She has an academic background in international relations, human rights, and socio-ecological economics and policy. She previously worked as an academic tutor and research assistant at the Vienna University of Economics.

Mariam wants to make sure that a platform is given to those who need it most. She aims to establish long-term relationships across the third sector to ensure we work together to realise common goals and aims.

Jennifer is a barrister qualified in England and Wales. She specialises in refugee and modern slavery law and in equalities law including disability discrimination. She has an LLM in International Human Rights Law and delivers training on modern slavery and other legal issues. She is one of the co-founders of the Ukraine Advice Project.

She has previously worked as the Co-Head of Legal Protection at the Helen Bamber Foundation, where she helped oversee their medico-legal report service. She gives advice for refugee and migrants charities, including Migrants Organise, where she is their modern slavery lead and she sits on the advisory group for the Migrants Mental Capacity Advocacy Project. She has co-convened the Home Office’s equalities stakeholder engagement subgroup and regularly acts in legal proceedings in England and Wales.

Yevheniia Filippova is an experienced Ukrainian qualified lawyer who joined the team in November 2022 as a Legal Caseworker for Ukraine Advice Scotland in our Scottish Refugee and Migrant Centre.

Yevheniia is a graduate of the National School of Judges of Ukraine. She possesses 16 years’ experience in litigation, as a criminal, family, civil and human rights lawyer, most recently as managing partner of her own private practice in Odessa, Ukraine.
Yevheniia also has experience in managing legal aid centres in Ukraine, working with small and wider international legal teams and maintaining effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders including public bodies, civil society and the media.