Professor Karen Musalo is the Bank of America Foundation Chair in International Law at the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco. She is the founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which is known internationally for its research and legal advocacy and its program of expert consultation to attorneys around the world.  Professor Musalo is the lead co-author of Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative Approach (6th edition), as well as numerous book chapters, reports, and articles.

Professor Musalo’s scholarship has spanned many issues, including religion as a basis for claims to protection, gender-based asylum, and the relationship between root causes and forced migration. She has contributed to the evolving jurisprudence of asylum law not only through her scholarship, but through her litigation. For more than three decades, Professor Musalo has been involved in every major landmark case involving gender violence and the right to refugee protection.

Professor Musalo is also known for her pioneering innovations; she was the first U.S. attorney to partner with forensic mental health professionals in the representation of traumatized asylum seekers, a practice that has now become standard. She also edited the earliest handbook for practitioners on cross-cultural issues and the impact of culture on credibility in the asylum context.  Professor Musalo is a frequent media commentator, and author of numerous opinion pieces on contemporary developments in the field of refugee protection.