Sign-in
Molnar, Petra

Petra
Molnar

https://www.petramolnar.com/

Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. A former classical musician, she has been working in migrant justice since 2008, first as a settlement worker and community organizer, and now as a researcher and lawyer. She writes about digital border technologies, immigration detention, health and human rights, gender-based violence, as well as the politics of refugee, immigration, and international law. Petra has worked all over the world including Jordan, Turkey, Philippines, Kenya, Colombia, Canada, Palestine, and various parts of Europe. She is the co-creator of the Migration and Technology Monitor, a collective of civil society, journalists, academics, and filmmakers interrogating technological experiments on people crossing borders. She is the Associate Director of the Refugee Law Lab at York University and a Faculty Associate (and former Fellow) at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Petra’s first book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in The Age of Artificial Intelligence, is published with The New Press in 2024. Petra is the author of numerous academic and popular press publications on technology and migration and one of the first and leading international voices on these issues. Her work has been widely featured in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Time Magazine, and the New York Times, among others, and she is frequently quoted in international and local media as well as various policy briefings at the national and international level. Petra helped to draft the influential report on digital borders and racism by the UN Special Rapporteur on Discrimination, Racism, Xenophobia and Related Forms of Intolerance Professor Tendayi Achiume and a report on the human rights-based approach to digital border governance for the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner . Petra is also the co-author of “Bots at the Gate,” an internationally recognized report on the human rights impacts of automated decision-making in immigration and refugee systems. Her recent report, Technological Testing Grounds, foregrounds the perspectives of people on the move in Greece and Europe as they interact with violent surveillance technologies. Petra holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, a Masters of Anthropology from York University, Centre for Refugee studies, and an LL.M in International Law from the University of Cambridge.
Migration Reasearch Hub ID: 4754
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3052-5663
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/petra-molnar/
X/Twitter https://x.com/_PMolnar

Expertise

Migration processes
Migration governance
Disciplines
Methods
Geographies

Roles

  • Harvard Law School

    Other, MA, United States
    Faculty Associate

  • York University

    University, Toronto, Canada
    Associate Director

  • University of Toronto Faculty of Law

    University, Toronto, Canada
    Director (Acting)

  • University of Toronto Faculty of Law

    University, Toronto, Canada
    Research Associate

Research

Digital border technologies, techno‐racism and logics of exclusion

Authors Petra Molnar, Petra Molnar
Year 2023
Journal Name International Migration
Citations (WoS) 3
1 Journal Article

Discretion to Deport: Intersections between Health and Detention of Syrian Refugees in Jordan

Authors Petra Molnar
Year 2017
Journal Name Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees
Taxonomy View Taxonomy Associations
2 Journal Article

Everyday Injustices: Barriers to Access to Justice for Immigration Detainees in Canada

Authors Stephanie J. Silverman, Petra Molnar
Year 2016
Journal Name Refugee Survey Quarterly
3 Journal Article

Suggested Research

CrossMigration

Bringing migration research under one roof.

Funded by Led by

This project was made possible thanks to funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Ares(2017) 5627812-77012.

Partners

Ask us