Meet the Coram International team

Carolyn Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Essex and a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre. She was the Senior Legal Adviser to the Children’s Commissioner and served as the Children and Families Commissioner to the Legal Services Commission. She qualified at the Bar and practised in the English courts as a child lawyer, taking cases on children’s rights to the Supreme Court.

Professor Hamilton is an internationally known human rights and child rights lawyer who has published widely on issues of children’s rights, including juvenile justice; children in armed conflict;  violence against children; children and counter-terrorism; child protection, children and education and child labour; child marriage; gender-based violence; child exploitation; trafficking; refugee and asylum seeking children and administrative justice. Her report on Legal Protection from Violence: Analysis of Domestic Law relating to Violence against Children in ASEAN Member States was chosen as one of UNICEF’s best research projects in 2015.

She specialises in systems reform, covering research, policy, legal and practice reform. She also has a strong record in quantitative and qualitative research projects and evaluation, as well as legal drafting, the development of children’s courts and legal aid. She has a particular interest in religious courts. In addition, she has established child rights centres, legal aid services and diversion projects in a number of States. She has worked across Africa, Asia, Europe, Central Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East. Professor Hamilton is very experienced managing large EU Projects, for example our project Unlocking Children’s Rights with 11 partners.

Professor Hamilton was awarded the Sigrid Rausing prize for inspirational leadership in 2005 and the Children’s Legal Centre, of which she is Director, was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize in October 2009 for its work with refugee and asylum seeking children in England and its project for sexually exploited and trafficked girls in Tajikistan. Furthermore, Professor Hamilton has been granted the award of Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for Services to Children’s Rights and Education in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Awaz Raoof is a UK-qualified lawyer, technical consultant and researcher with over 15 years’ professional experience in public international law, development and child rights. Awaz has a LLB (Law) and LLM (Public International Law) from the London School of Economics, where she was awarded the Higgins Lauterpacht Prize in Public International Law 2005. She has a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice (Distinction).

Awaz specialises in providing technical and research expertise to Governments, UN agencies and (I)NGOs to develop laws, policies and system-wide reforms in line with international child rights standards. Her work includes designing and implementing research studies, mappings and evaluations relating to children and developing and delivering trainings to civil servants, professionals and practitioners on children’s rights. She also specialises in designing and operationalising pilot/model community-based programmes and services for children.

Awaz works on a broad range of thematic areas, including child protection, access to justice, combating violence against children, child rights and the business sector, child rights in the digital environment and monitoring children’s rights. Awaz has completed consultancies in a range of countries including Bangladesh, Belize, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Iraq, Lao PDR, Libya, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, Poland, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Turkiye, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zambia.

Awaz completed her legal training at a leading international law firm. Her experience includes providing legal support for human rights cases before the African Commission/Court on Human and People’s Rights and European Court of Human Rights.

Kirsten Anderson is an experienced development professional with qualifications and skills in law, social research and policy analysis and development. She has 20 years’ experience in researching, assessing and providing technical assistance to support the implementation of children’s and adolescent’s rights and to strengthen systems of protection for children and adolescents. She also has extensive experience in gender and equity analysis and youth development and participation. Kirsten has worked extensively for UNICEF, and also for UN Women, UNFPA, UNDP, Save the Children, Plan International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She has worked on projects in over 40 countries across South-East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Kirsten has a strong record of success in leading in the design and implementation of social and legal research projects, including large global and multi-country projects involving a range of quantitative and qualitative methods on child protection, child marriage and harmful practices, child justice, access to justice, violence against children, gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, children affected by migration and a range of other issues. She also has extensive experience developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks and tools; completing programme assessments and evaluations, including large, multi-component country programmes; carrying out situational analysis of children, women and youth in a range of contexts; and providing technical assistance and capacity development to governments and (I)NGOs on child protection, child justice and access to justice systems strengthening, including  through the development of national policies, strategies and action plans.

She holds a Masters in Public and International Law (University of Melbourne), a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Cultural Studies) (Griffith University), and has completed a range of courses on quantitative, qualitative and participatory social research methods. Before joining Coram International, she held legal and research positions at the University of Melbourne Law School and the Department of Justice and Attorney General in Queensland. She has published numerous reports, papers, policy documents and articles on a variety of child rights, child protection and child justice issues.

Kara Apland is a social researcher and policy analyst with over 10 years of experience working in applied research in international development, specialising in child protection. Over the course of her career, Kara has led and managed numerous research and evaluation consultancies for UNICEF and other UN agencies, government bodies and (I)NGOs on a range of topics in child protection and social policy. She has extensive experience designing quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, leading evaluations, designing theories of change and monitoring frameworks, drafting analytical reports and developing recommendations for policy and programming. Kara has worked in over twenty countries, including Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Liberia, Moldova, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Kara holds an MSc in Human Rights Law and Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Political Science and Economics from Brown University. Kara is currently a part-time PhD candidate at Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-legal Studies, studying the influence of law on social norms, attitudes and practices relating to early marriage and teenage pregnancy in Sri Lanka. She has completed post-graduate work in statistical analysis at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and undertaken coursework on social protection at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex. Before joining Coram International, Kara completed research fellowships from Brown University and Yale Law School, as well as a Fulbright scholarship at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kara has drafted and edited numerous analytical reports, policy papers, technical documents, presentations and articles in a range of formats and tailored to different audiences, including for presentation to the highest levels of government, UN personnel and development partners, and for wider publication. Her recent evaluation report, Formative Evaluation of the Be a Change Agent Project (B-Cap), was rated as one of UNICEF’s 13 best evaluation reports in 2018 and her Final evaluation of the Justice for Every Child Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina was rated as one of UNICEF’s 13 best evaluation reports in 2017. Kara has also co-authored several peer reviewed academic articles.

Amelia holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Sussex. Amelia specialises in longitudinal research and quantitative and qualitative research techniques, with particular expertise in social influences on child mental health and related outcomes. She has over six years’ experience of leading child-focused research and evaluations to inform intervention and prevention practice and policy across academic, public health, government and charity sectors. Amelia’s research has been centred on interrelated social and familial risk factors for children and young people, including poverty, intimate partner violence, child abuse and neglect and broader parenting practices. Amelia has vast experience in developing quantitative and qualitative research methods and tools, including questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and participatory research across a range of research topics. She is skilled in conducting complex statistical analysis, including structural equation modelling, loglinear modelling and multilevel modelling, as well as other inferential statistics such as regression analyses and ANOVA.

Amelia joined Coram the team in July 2021, and supports the team throughout all stages of the design and implementation of social and legal research projects, particularly with the design of quantitative and qualitative research tools and quantitative data analysis. She is currently working alongside Professor Hamilton on a multi-country situation analysis of children affected by migration in the ASEAN States, and an update on the situation of children in Pacific Island Countries.

Prior to working at Coram International, Amelia held positions as Impact and Evaluation Manager at Buttle UK, a charity supporting children in poverty, and as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Adverse Childhood Experiences with the University of Sussex and Public Health Wales. Amelia has also conducted multiple evaluations and research projects for the UK government, produced UK government policy evidence resources, and published research in multiple peer-reviewed journal articles.

Mathilde is a child protection applied researcher and practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience in international development and humanitarian settings across multiple countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Her work focuses on violence against children (VAC), social norms, adolescent girls’ and women’s empowerment, sexual and reproductive health rights, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), including Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and its impact on children.

Mathilde is passionate about projects that generate insightful data to inform programme decision-making and participatory approaches to learning. She has a particular research interest in understanding how social and gender norms affect children’s life trajectories and how social justice interventions can address the multiple and intersecting risk factors that are influencing their well-being. She has conducted research on social norms in Senegal and Papua New Guinea (she contributed to a peer-reviewed article in 2020).

Mathilde is skilled in research design and evaluation (realist, process, formative, mixed methods) and has led numerous multi-country studies and evaluations on VAC, violence against women and girls (VAWG), mental health, disability and inclusion, digital inclusion, and women’s and girls’ empowerment across Latin America, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She has trained and managed large data collection teams across various countries and has developed research protocols, including ethics review processes, and conducted mixed-methods data analysis (SPSS, NVivo, MAXQDA).

She has collaborated with UN agencies (UNICEF, UNHCR), governments, research institutions, and INGOs such as Plan International and Save the Children, as well as donor agencies including FCDO and GIZ, to implement gender and social inclusion interventions informed by evidence and practice-based knowledge.

Farah Elhouni holds an LLB in Law with Politics and an LLM in Public International Law with Distinction from the University of Manchester. Farah has also studied a semester of Law at Tripoli University, looking at principles of Libyan law.

Farah joined Coram International in 2021 and supports the team as an International Research Officer where she is involved in the design and implementation of research activities, mappings and assessments, as well as the development of trainings on child protection and child justice. She is currently working on Coram International’s institutional contract with UNICEF Libya on child protection system strengthening, which involves the development of training packages and curricula on child rights, child justice and child protection for different line ministries; as well as supporting the Ministry of Interior in the development of SOPs for the Family and Child Protection Units. She is also part of the team working on the UNICEF HQ evaluation of the ‘Reimagine Justice for Children’ agenda on juvenile justice reform, which includes case studies from different UNICEF-regions. For this project, she is focusing on the use of alternatives to detention in Mauritania as a case study.

Before joining Coram, Farah worked on several legal research projects, including a legal research internship with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, researching MENA approaches to international law; and an internship with the International Bar Association. Farah is fluent in Arabic and has excellent experience working in a legal capacity in both English and Arabic.

Ramyah holds a first-class LLB in International Law and Globalisation from the University of Birmingham, and an LLM in International Law with Distinction from University College London. She is currently studying the Bar Practice Course part-time, upon completion of which she will be qualified to practice as a barrister in the courts of England and Wales.

Since joining Coram International in June 2021, Ramyah has played a key role in the design and implementation of research and evaluation projects, while also offering expert technical guidance to promote the integration of children’s rights into governance frameworks and programming. Ramyah has contributed to numerous consultancies for UN agencies and other leading international organisations, and has conducted in-country data collection across Europe, the Pacific, Central Asia, South Asia, and South America. Her areas of specialisation include juvenile justice, gender-based issues, harmful and traditional practices, and child rights governance.

Freya Allery holds a first-class MEng Engineering Science degree from the University of Oxford and a Master’s of Research degree with distinction from University College London, where she is currently a part-time PhD candidate focusing on data-driven methods to identify risk factors contributing to heath inequalities in minority populations. Through her diverse set of research experiences, she has developed proficiency in a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Freya joined Coram International in October 2023 and supports the team as a Mixed Methods Research Officer, particularly with quantitative data analysis and statistical methodologies. At Coram International, Freya applies qualitative and quantitative research methods to a range of social and legal research projects, including in child protection, juvenile justice, and gender equality issues. Her work includes using statistical methods like regression analysis, ANOVA, and meta-analysis to analyse a diverse range of data. Freya has supported the technical implementation of several projects, including a meta-synthesis and meta-analysis of interventions to prevent child marriage with UNICEF ROSA, developing and implementing a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework for education programmes aimed at ending gender-based violence in Southeast Asia with UNICEF EAPRO, an evaluation of the Better Care initiative for UNICEF Ukraine, a global evaluation with UNICEF HQ on access to justice for children, and a social service workforce mapping for UNICEF Bangladesh.

Prior to working at Coram International, Freya was a Visiting Researcher for Health Data Research UK’s CVD-COVID-UK consortium. Utilising data wrangling methods, she synthesised demographic and longitudinal health data for sixty million individuals and employed advanced quantitative techniques to explore health inequalities in ethnic minority populations. She has supported all stages of project design and implementation, co-authored several peer-reviewed articles and presented her work at international conferences. In addition to her research experiences, Freya has worked with children and young people in various environments. As part of a community revitalisation project in Peru, she has used her Spanish proficiency to run educational workshops for secondary-school-aged children. Within the UK, she has worked with young people as part of various outreach initiatives to widen access to higher education for under-represented groups.

Bex holds a First Class Honours in BA History from University College London, as well as an MA Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies with Distinction from King’s College London. During her masters, she specialised in human rights in complex protracted conflicts, hybrid governance and post-conflict contexts.

Bex joined Coram in March 2024, initially as a research assistant. She is also working on a project for UNICEF HQ evaluating UNICEF’s ‘Reimagining Justice’ agenda on juvenile justice reform.

Before joining Coram, Bex worked as a casework and research coordinator at Asylum Links. She worked with a remote team responding to case queries from asylum seekers across the globe, undertaking context specific research, liaising with UNHCR offices, and providing signposting to legal services. Rebecca has also worked on a research project on migrant access to healthcare in the UK for Citizens UK and Doctors of the World. The role included undertaking a desk review, report writing, conducting interviews with asylum seekers and migrants, and presenting findings to stakeholders.

Madison holds an MSc in Global Mental Health and Society with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh and an Honours BA in Psychology from New York University, with a specialisation in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Madison joined Coram International in May 2023 and is our Project Manager and Researcher. Madison supports the planning and implementation of projects, coordination and collaboration with partners and external consultants, and reporting to donors and partners. She also conducts desk-based and field-based research and was recently a consultant for a project with UNICEF ESARO on including strengthening the inclusion of children on the move in national child protection systems and provision of mental health and psychosocial support services. She is currently working on a number of projects, including the justice for children formative evaluation and baseline for UNICEF HQ.

Prior to working at Coram International, Madison was a Programme Lead for Power2, a youth charity based in London and Manchester. At Power2, she was responsible for delivering early intervention programmes in schools throughout London, and delivered work on behalf of the SAFE Taskforce and Violence Reduction Unit to improve outcomes for vulnerable young people. She has also worked as a research assistant on several projects for New York University and NYU Langone Health.

Jen holds an MSc in Social Research and a BA in French and Politics, both from the University of Edinburgh.

Jen joined Coram International in October 2024 and is a member of the Project Management team, supporting the planning and implementation of projects, coordination and collaboration with partners and external consultants, and reporting to donors and partners.

Before joining Coram International, Jen was the Operations Manager of a small fundraising company, Charity Runners Clearing House. Jen has also worked as a temporary Events Assistant at the Institute for Government and as a Foreign Language Teacher at the University of Caen, Normandy, and has volunteered for various organisations including holding activist committee positions within Amnesty International.

Andy holds a BA in Social & Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, a Certificate in Trade Union Studies & Industrial Relations from Middlesex Polytechnic and an M.Phil in Town Planning from University College London.

Andy joined Coram international in October 2024 and is a member of the Project Management team.

Prior to working at Coram International, Andy worked with a range of non-profit organisations, including Southern Housing Group, Oxford Research Group, European Dialogue, Consumers International, Helsinki Citizens Assembly, New Economics Foundation, European Nuclear Disarmament.