Sarah Meyer (2006 - 2007)

Australia

Sarah received a BA(Hons) in Politics from Monash University. A Rhodes Scholar, she received an MPhil in Development Studies from Oxford University. Her thesis research,- carried out while she worked as a research associate for the Refugee Law Project-, focused on the well-being of Sudanese refugees in refugee settlements in remote parts of northwestern Uganda. Whether teaching Afghani refugees English or visiting asylum-seekers in detention centers in Australia, Sarah’s work has focused on the rights of refugees and issues affecting displaced persons, drawing on inspiration from her grandparents’ experiences as refugees from Germany and Poland.

At Oxford, she won the Gilbert Murray Trust 2005 International Studies Committee Junior Award for her research into the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, and acted as a tutor at the Refugee Studies Center International Summer School.

Sarah has worked as a policy advisor in the Victoria State government in Australia, focusing on financial exclusion and the community development finance options in Victoria, and issues ranging from disability discrimination to developing a social policy agenda. Early in her career, Sarah worked as an intern at The Jerusalem Report. She speaks Hebrew, and has studied Japanese and Arabic. As one of her referees wrote, Sarah has a “strong desire and a true capacity to draw together the concentration of academic research with the needfulness of pragmatic community development”.

As a Sauvé Scholar, Sarah continued her focus on refugees, conflict and humanitarian aid. She worked at the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, presented research at Concordia University, the University of Montreal and York University in Toronto, and represented the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees’ NGO Consultations in Geneva. She travelled around Australia to research off-shore processing of refugees, and co-authored the advocacy report on Australian refugee policy, ‘A Price Too High: The cost of Australia’s approach to Asylum Seekers’ for Oxfam and A Just Australia.

She subsequently interned at the Brookings Institution’s Internal Displacement Project in Washington D.C. and is currently an Education Officer at American Jewish World Service, a grant-making and service NGO working in Africa, Asia and Latin America.