Davide Tomaselli

Excited to present Digital Patrolling this Monday 27 Oct, 12:00 at UniFi! Many thanks to Prof. Veronica Federico for the invitation. Honoured to have Prof. Francesca Biondi Dal Monte and Davide Tomaselli as discussants.
If you would like to join, let me know! ✨

🦄Queer Alert🦄
The EUI Queer and Feminist Studies Working Group, together with Storie di sessualità e genere from Università di Padova, is organising a two-day "InterQueer" workshop in Padova, on 29-30 January 2026.
👉Find the call for papers here: gender.eui.eu/wp-content/u...

This is why I cannot see my scholarly role complete without political engagement: be it within my institution, fighting for
#grantequality, or outside, engaging, in recent times in particular, with movements supporting the liberation of #Palestine.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this!

I also reflected on the responsibilities that this privilege bears too. I do not believe that academia should aim for axiological neutrality: the knowledge we produce is irreducibly political, and so are the infrastructures, resources, and processes we build on to produce it.

I also had the opportunity to reflect on my experience at the @eui-law.bsky.social. I am very aware of the great privilege I benefit from by spending my time here as a researcher and by witnessing, daily, how knowledge is (or should at least) materially produced: in collaboration and in solidarity.

An example? When it comes to migration and asylum law, a (critical) queer legal scholar would rather fight for the abolition of borders than advocate for a multiplication of the existing categories populating a fundamentally unjust, violent, and racist border management system.

I argue that it is not enough to do research "about" LGBT people in order to be a queer scholar. Queer legal scholarship is about reflecting on our positioning, reassessing our epistemology and methodology, embracing the radical implications of critique, and taking a bold political stance.

During the conversation Marilea and I had, I shared my thoughts on what it means to take a queer and critical approach to migration and asylum law, and, more broadly, what it means to be queer and critical while doing (legal) research.

Deconstructing EU law through a queer lens: a conversation with Davide Tomaselli In this interview, EUI Law researcher Davide Tomaselli explores European asylum law through a queer perspective Drawing on legal practice and political theory

I am grateful to the @eui-eu.bsky.social, the Research Communications team, and especially Marilea Poppa for granting me the opportunity to speak about my ongoing PhD research!
www.eui.eu/news-hub?id=...

Starting the new academic year as a co-coordinator of the @eui-qfg.bsky.social!
Exciting times and events ahead, stay tuned 🦄

I am curious and excited to hear what you think about this!
In the meantime, a heartfelt thank you to all the people I encountered in these two years who were patient and kind enough to dedicate some of their time to discussing these topics with me: I owe you inspiration and motivation!

This grim conclusion, and the cogent call it extends to scholars inviting their critical engagement with questions of power within the law, still inspires my research, continuing now with my PhD project developing a #queer critique of EU law.

It is in this framework, then, that SOGIESC asylum can be understood as a new weapon in the arsenal of racist border politics: LGBTIQ+ rights discourses turn #homonationalist to justify, yet again, why certain people can be recklessly excluded.

Reading classic themes of refugee law such as #discretion and #credibility through this lens, I show that the law of international protection cannot do without politics: its very functioning depends on othering processes.

By reviewing case law and scholarship in international refugee law, and particularly focusing on European asylum and migration law, I claim that the case of #SOGIESC asylum actually provides a tool to deconstruct the very foundation of refugehood: the binary between forced and voluntary movements.

At the same time, a new minority has obtained recognition in the international refugee law forum: asylum seekers claiming protection from persecution on the ground of their sexual orientation and gender identity. I basically ask: is someone paying the price of this evolution?

In this article, I ask the unsettling question of the politics of #asylum for #LGBTIQ+ people. Recent decades have witnessed an increasing tightening and violent governance of #borders supported by uncensored and often unrecognised racist, dehumanising discourses.

I started working on it as an LLM student at @uvalawschool.bsky.social and I submitted it as a PhD Researcher at the @eui-eu.bsky.social. It is for me a great satisfaction to see how dedication and patience, nurtured by passionate academic discussions, can really turn into public paper.

‘Forced’ Refugees versus ‘Voluntary’ Migrants: Deconstructing a Binary through SOGIESC Claims of Asylum Abstract. This article addresses the consequences that SOGIESC claims of asylum have on international refugee law and its fundamental distinction between ‘

I am genuinely happy to share that my first big publication is now available online!
"'Forced' Refugees versus 'Voluntary' Migrants" is the result of two years of research, writing, reflection, discussion, rethinking.
Now I can't wait to debate it!

Considering how EU values played a central role in these "feminist" cases and how they're increasingly called for by EU institutions themselves, see the pending Commission v Hungary case, we think it's high time we took the critique of the legal politics of values seriously.

While this jurisprudential turn was mainly welcomed as good feminist news, we suggest that the way we gain wins for women and other oppressed groups is still dependent on problematic othering dynamics.

Whose Values?

Happy to see this piece published on @verfassungsblog.de!
Together with Narin Nosrati we felt the need to reflect about the way we, as European legal scholars, interpreted the evolution of the CJEU's position in some gender-based asylum cases from last year.
verfassungsblog.de/ecj-western-...

Thanks to the @eui-history.bsky.social for the administrative work and to the EUI Queer and Feminist WG, especially Georgia-Taygeti Katakou, the EUI Constitutional Law and Politics WG, and the EUI Fundamental Rights WG for the organisational support.

I hope to see many of you on the 14th of March!

The event will be held only on-premise to support respectful and enriching debate, while many amazing discussants from the @eui-law.bsky.social will help to trigger discussions (thanks in advance to Gráinne De Búrca, Silvia Suteu, @biljanak.bsky.social, Feifei Shen, and Emilia Vrahimi).

After many weeks spent organising this, I am so happy to finally extend the invitation to participate to all those who believe that the necessity to talk about this topic grows by the hour simply because, at the end of the day, the law is a big determinant of the livability of our lives.

Registration is now open for this event on gender diversity in public law with Stefano Osella at the @eui-eu.bsky.social.

www.eui.eu/events?id=57...

It was a true pleasure to engage with Janna's great work and I hope that the review shows how important this piece of research was for me and for my own understanding of refugee law.
Needless to say, warmly recommended reading!

The Concealment Controversy: Sexual Orientation, Discretion Reasoning and the Scope of Refugee Protection Why is discretion so difficult to get rid of? Such is the fundamental question that steers Janna Wessels’ inquiry in her seminal research on the so-called

So happy that the review I wrote (my very first book review!) of Janna Wessels's "The Concealment Controversy" is out in the latest issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law!

doi.org/10.1093/ijrl...