SOGIESC in Asylum:
Evidence-Based and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

The conference, funded by the Nordic Gender Fund and Stiftelsen för Åbo Akademi, will bring together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of legal psychology, law, gender studies, and migration, with a focus on evidence-based and SOGIESC (Sexual orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics)-sensitive asylum decision-making.

📍 Turku, Finland 
📅 15–17 October 2026 

We are delighted to have Hilary Evans Cameron (Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University), Lisa Diamond (University of Utah), Ilan Meyer (the Williams Institute/UCLA) Hüseyin Ali Kudret (independent researcher), and Hedayat Selim (Åbo Akademi University) as keynote speakers. Read more about them further down!

Programme

Location: Astra, Porthaninkatu 3

Day 1 – October 15 (11:00–18:00)

11:00–12:45: Registration and badge pick-up (Astra main entrance)
12:45–13:00: Welcome remarks, Organizing committee (Auditorium Sven)
13:00–14:00: Keynote – Hüseyin Ali Kudret (Auditorium Sven) “What You Carry Into the Room: Reception, identification, and the preconditions of credible testimony in SOGIESC asylum claims” (Auditorium Sven)
14:00–14:30: Coffee break
14:30–15:30: Keynote – Lisa Diamond, title TBD (Auditorium Sven)
15:30–15:45: Short break
15:45–17:00: Parallel session A: Credibility Assessment in SOGIESC Claims (Hilma) Parallel session B: Identity, Psychology, and Empirical Approaches (Stella)
17:00–18:00: Mingle and sparkling wine with a special performance (Auditorium Bonfire)

Day 2 – October 16 (09:00–17:40)

09:00–09:30: Coffee
09:30–10:30: Keynote – Hedayat Selim: “Rethinking the search for an elusive ‘truth’ in SOGIESC asylum decision-making” (Auditorium Sven)
10:30–10:45: Short break
10:45–12:30: Parallel session C: Interviewing and Investigative Practice (Hilma) Parallel session D: Medical Evidence, Health, and Wellbeing (Stella)
12:30–13:30: Lunch (Astra Solsidan)
13:30–14:30: Keynote – Hilary Evans Cameron: “Psychology Evidence in SOGIESC Asylum Claims: A Call for Asymmetry” (Auditorium Sven)
14:30–14:45: Coffee break
14:45–16:15: Parallel session E: Country Contexts and Political Landscapes (Hilma) Parallel session F: Institutions, Governance, and Professional Practice (Stella)
16:15–16:30: Short break
16:30–17:30: Keynote – Ilan Meyer: “Stigma and Prejudice as Foundations for Understanding LGBTQ Lives” (Auditorium Sven)
17:30–17:40: Closing remarks (Auditorium Sven)
19:30: Conference dinner (Kakola Brewing Company)

Day 3 – October 17 (09:30–13:00). Please note, this day is for anthology participants only

09:30–10:00: Coffee and light breakfast (Astra Solsidan)
10:00–12:30: Anthology session (Auditorium Bonfire). Collaborative session of the forthcoming edited anthology.
12:30–13:00: Closing of the conference (Auditorium Bonfire)

Keynote speakers’ biographies

Lisa Diamond

Professor
Lisa Diamond is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, where she has been a faculty member since 1999. Her research examines the development and expression of sexual and gender identity across the life course, with particular attention to sexual fluidity, the biological underpinnings of sexual desire, and the health implications of social stigma and social safety for sexually and gender diverse individuals. She is best known for her longitudinal research on sexual fluidity—the capacity for individuals to experience shifts in patterns of same-sex and other-sex attractions over time—as documented in her widely cited book Sexual Fluidity (Harvard University Press, 2008). She is co-editor of the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology and has published over 140 articles and book chapters. She has received distinguished contribution awards from multiple divisions of the American Psychological Association and has held leadership roles in the International Academy for Sex Research.

Ilan Meyer

Professor
Ilan H. Meyer, Ph.D. is Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at UCLA’s School of Law and Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. Dr. Meyer studies the relationships of identity, stigma and prejudice, and mental health outcomes in sexual and gender minority populations. In several highly cited papers, Dr. Meyer has developed a theory of minority stress, which describes the relationship of social stressors and mental disorders and suicidality. The model has guided his and other investigators’ population research on LGBTQ health disparities by identifying the mechanisms by which social stressors impact health and describing the harm to LGBTQ people from prejudice and stigma. For his work, Dr. Meyer received awards including the American Psychological Association Presidential Citation and the National Institutes of Health Sexual and Gender Minority Distinguished Investigator Award.
SOGIESC in Asylum:
Evidence-Based and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Get to know our Keynote speakers.

Hilary Evans Cameron

Associate Professor
Hilary Evans Cameron is an Associate Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, in Toronto, Canada. A former litigator who represented refugee claimants for a decade, she holds a doctorate in refugee law from the University of Toronto. Much of Prof. Evans Cameron’s research centres on fact-finding, with a focus on deception judgments in refugee status rejections. She explores questions at the intersection of law and psychology: How do decision-makers decide that a refugee claimant is lying? What inferences do they rely on to justify these conclusions? What assumptions underlie these inferences, and how well-founded are these assumptions? Her work in legal logics explores the principles that guide fact-finding: What structures constrain the drawing of factual conclusions from evidence, and what normative principles should guide the development of these structures? Prof. Evans Cameron is the author of many publications, including a book about the law of fact-finding in refugee status decision-making (Refugee Law’s Fact-finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake, Cambridge 2018).

Hedayat Selim

Postdoctoral Researcher
Hedayat Selim is a postdoctoral researcher within the Psych-AID network at Åbo Akademi University. Her recent research focuses on the influence of implicit cognitive bias and stereotypes in asylum decisionmaking, with an emphasis on asylum cases based on religious and sexual identity. Her doctoral thesis investigated how Finnish asylum authorities evaluate the credibility of asylum claims based on sexual orientation. Since 2012, Hedayat has worked in the field of asylum and migration with UN agencies, NGOs, and universities in Egypt, Italy, and Finland. Her experience includes assisting asylum-seekers in applying for international protection, interviewing and determining the refugee status of asylum-seekers, and training policy-level actors. Hedayat holds a master’s degree in human rights studies from Columbia University in the City of New York and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the American University in Cairo.

Hüseyin Ali Kudret

Independent Researcher
Hüseyin Kudret is an independent researcher, legal consultant, and human-rights defender and activist specialising in international human rights and refugee law, with a particular focus on discrimination law and grounds related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Originally trained and qualified as a lawyer with the Istanbul Bar Association, and holding an LLM in Public International Law from Utrecht University, they now work at the intersection of legal research, advocacy, and practice. Hüseyin contributes to civil-society initiatives including Women in Refugee Law (WiRL), Cocktail Nijmegen, New Women Connectors, Amnesty International, Dutch Lawyers for Human Rights (NJCM), and the advisory board of Psych-AID, helping to strengthen protection and participation for refugees and other displaced people.
Presentation and anthology information


Presentations will be approximately 10 minutes + 5 minutes for questions. Please send the PowerPoint presentation as instructed in the email.

Edited anthology

The conference will culminate in the preparation of an edited, peer-reviewed anthology bringing together international research on SOGIESC and asylum decision-making. The volume will consolidate interdisciplinary perspectives from legal psychology, law, and gender studies, with the aim of providing a shared empirical and conceptual foundation for future research and practitioner training. The volume is intended as a lasting scholarly output and as a piece of research infrastructure supporting evidence-based and SOGIESC-sensitive asylum practices. The session on the anthology is held on 17.10, see the programme for more information.

The section Legal Foundations clarifies how SOGIESC claims have been incorporated into refugee law, how “particular social group” jurisprudence has evolved, and how evidentiary and forward-looking standards structure decision-making.

The section Identity and Harm synthesizes psychological research on sexual and gender identity, minority stress, trauma, and concealment, providing conceptual tools for understanding the lived realities that legal categories attempt to capture.

The section Credibility and Evidence examines how trauma, stigma, memory processes, digital traces, and cultural expectations affect the evaluation of testimony and supporting materials, distinguishing stereotype-driven reasoning from evidence-informed assessment.

The section Risk and Professional Judgment addresses the forward-looking evaluation of persecution risk, the integration of country-of-origin information, the limits of prediction, and the psychological demands placed on decision-makers themselves.

More information will follow during the anthology session. Anthology first draft deadline: January 15, 2027

Getting to Turku and where to stay


Here you can find great information on how to get to and around Turku. We have an airport in Turku with connections from Stockholm with SAS. It is also possible to fly to Helsinki and get a bus (2 hours) to Turku. Finnair has their own connection with bus and there are also other options, for example OnniBus.

The two closest hotels to the venue are Scandic Julia and Centro Hotel. However, nothing is very far in Turku and there are lots of other nice hotels.

Background


Across different Refugee Determination Systems (RSD), asylum decision-making in SOGIESC-based claims (e.g., those involving sexual orientation and gender identity) remains inconsistent and poorly understood. These cases often require asylum decision-makers to assess the credibility of deeply personal experiences—such as identity, relationships, and persecution—especially in the absence of corroborating external evidence. Decision-makers may therefore rely heavily on intuition, implicit expectations, and cultural assumptions, which risks reinforcing bias in decision-making processes and undermining the fairness of asylum decisions.
Qualitative research shows that SOGIESC applicants are often assessed against stereotypical expectations of how sexual or gender minorities should look, behave, or narrate their experiences—for instance, gay men and lesbians being disbelieved for not appearing sufficiently gender nonconforming. Such findings highlight a reliance on disproven psychological assumptions and cultural stereotypes rather than evidence-based criteria.
Yet, there is still little empirical and experimental research that directly examines and causally tests the impact of these biases on asylum decision-making or evaluates systematic, evidence-based ways to mitigate them. Moreover, asylum claims are rarely unidimensional but often intersectional. SOGIESC-related claims frequently intersect with other identity dimensions, such as ethnicity and religion, adding further complexity to the process. Yet, existing empirical research on asylum interviewing has largely overlooked intersectionality. This underscores the need for stronger interdisciplinary collaboration between legal psychology, law, and gender studies to develop systematic, evidence-based approaches for investigating and evaluating SOGIESC-related asylum claims across national contexts.

The conference aims to:
– Connect scholars working on SOGIESC and asylum topics across disciplines, institutions, and countries.
– Develop shared conceptual and methodological frameworks for investigating factors around SOGI-related decision-making, including but not limited to assessing and improving common terminology, approaches to data collection and analysis, and principles for cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration.
– Provide the foundation for sustained joint research outputs.
– Culminate in an edited peer-reviewed anthology.

About the organizers

The conference is organized by the Psych-AID research network, an interdisciplinary research group at Åbo Akademi University. We bring psychological and legal evidence to support fair and accurate asylum decision-making. The organizing team brings together expertise in legal psychology and asylum law, collaborating with scholars and practitioners across Europe and beyond

Contact us

sogiescconference@abo.fi

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