Queen Mary PhD Law candidate secures prestigious scholarship
Yijia Liu was awarded the Helen Reece Scholarship by the Modern Law Review for her critical work on international child abduction in the fields of feminist legal theory and family law.
The Helen Reece Scholarship is a yearlong scholarship of £3,500 awarded in memory of past Modern Law Review Committee Member Ms Helen Reece. It is awarded annually to the best applicant in the fields of feminist legal theory, family law and related fields.
Yijia’s thesis, titled Race, Gender, and State Sovereignty in Global Mobility: Problematising the Hague Child Abduction Convention, focuses on unilateral parental child relocation—commonly referred to in legal discourse as international child abduction.
Drawing on archival sources and critical legal theory, she argues that the Hague Convention disproportionately serves state interests, especially those of Global North countries, over the rights and safety of relocating parents and their children, particularly mothers fleeing domestic violence.
She is supervised by Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, and Dr Hedi Viterbo, Senior Lecturer in Law.
- Find out more about Yijia’s project.
- Apply to do a PhD in law at Queen Mary.
- Learn more about the Modern Law Review Scholarships.