Bassina Farbenblum
Co-Executive Director
Associate Professor at UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice
Bassina is an international lawyer, academic and clinical legal educator, and a global expert on migrants’ rights. She is an Associate Professor at UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice, where she was the founding Director of the UNSW Human Rights Clinic for 10 years. Bassina previously worked as an impact litigator at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Sydney, and the Australian Human Rights Commission, as well as a commercial litigator at WilmerHale (NY). Over the past decade Bassina has led numerous national and global research teams on migrant workers’ access to justice, governance of migrant recruitment, responsibilities of business, technology for migrant empowerment, migrants’ housing rights and most recently, the impact of COVID-19 on temporary migrants. She frequently advises governments, service providers, unions, UN agencies and civil society organisations globally on the rights of temporary migrants. Bassina was awarded the Open Society Foundations International Migration Initiative Fellowship for her work on labour migration in Asia.
Laurie Berg
Co-Executive Director
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney
Laurie is widely recognised as one of Australia’s leading legal researchers on migrant workers’ rights. She has conducted major international and national studies on migrant worker wage theft, exploitation and access to justice in Australia, and globally. Her book, Migrant Rights at Work: Law’s Precariousness at the Intersection of Immigration and Labour published by Routledge in 2016, was the first on migrant workers’ rights in Australia. Prior to her academic appointment, Laurie held posts at Human Rights First in New York, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington DC and the Australian Red Cross in Sydney. She is a recipient of the Lisa Gilad prize by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, and has been awarded numerous university and faculty prizes for research excellence and impact.
Fiona Yeh
Research Associate
Fiona joined the Migrant Justice Institute in May 2023 as Research Associate. She previously worked in the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department and Department for Employment and Workplace Relations, providing legal policy advice on how to address wage theft and worker exploitation to the Federal Government. She has worked as a teacher and researcher in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and is currently also doing research work at UTS on refugee law and policy.
Rebecca Payne
Head of Strategy & Engagement
Rebecca is a marketing and communications veteran with experience across a wide range of organisations within industries including law, media and finance. She began her career as a journalist and holds an MA (Journalism) as well as an LLB (Hons) from University College London. Following a successful corporate career, she transitioned to working with for-purpose organisations with a social justice focus. She began Manlygees, a group of volunteers who welcome refugees to the Northern Beaches under the Federal Government CRISP program and is a volunteer Legal Observer.