Sukru Surucu

Kagan has a background in international relations and international law, and most recently entered Edinburgh Law School in 2023 for his PhD degree. His past experiences include working in the major legal ranking directory, Chambers and Partners as a Research Analyst, and working both in Ankara and in London on academic research projects focusing on nuclear proliferation as a research assistant. He is interested in various topics under international security, and international law though his current academic interests focus on international organisations, global governance and refugee management. 

During his studies in Edinburgh, he was the deputy editor-in-chief of Contemporary Challenges Journal, branch editor for Polygeia, co editor-in-chief of Edinburgh Student Law Review, and currently a convenor of the International Law Reading Group.

LLM International Law - University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, UK)

BA International Relations - Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey)

Sukru Kagan Surucu | The University of Edinburgh

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Public international law, international organisations, refugee law, global governance, socio-legal approaches

Founder and Convenor of the International Law Reading Group

[email protected]

I am examining the mandate of the UNHCR, and how it is understood, reshaped, and implemented by actors that exist within the Geneva HQ of the organisation. I aim to borrow from socio-legal and ethnographic methods to conceptualise the mandate of the UNHCR to be contingent on the various human and non-human actors within the organisation. I am trying to accomplish a narrative reconstruction of the mandate of UNHCR through this lens, focusing especially on the increasing role of the UNHCR in externalisation of asylum projects, to understand whether this change in the mode of governance brought questions regarding the organisation's mandate internally, how such questions were construed, navigated, and resolved. I aim to find out whether internal changes that happened in the recent past of the UNHCR, and the practices and performance of non-human and human actors internally was impactful in potentially reimagining the organisation's legal order in the context of its engagement with externalisation. 

Tutor - International Law Ordinary (2024-2025 Fall Semester, University of Edinburgh)