ILSA Asks with Emma Várnagy

1. Introduction to the audience containing your name, who you are as a person, where do you come from, what is your field of expertise. If you believe that anything else should be added, or removed for privacy reasons, feel free to do so.

My name is Emma Várnagy and I am currently a doctoral researcher at Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre. I studied sociology and human rights law and I am part of two international and inter-disciplinary research groups, one focusing on strengthening human rights accountability and another on questions of evidence.

2. You have a lot of experience in the field of Human Rights and you are currently working on your PhD on the discrimination of the Roma, how did this focus of yours come about?

My current research focuses particularly on evidentiary challenges in proving the discrimination element of racist police violence cases at international human rights bodies. My attention is on Europe, where this issue concerns predominantly people who are - or perceived to be - of Roma ethnicity (although there are certainly and unfortunately other racialized minorities in Europe who are abused by law enforcement). I would therefore rather say that my research has a very specific and narrow focus primarily within anti-discrimination law, rules of evidence in international human rights adjudication, research methods to ‘measure racism’, and a fourth layer is it about Roma rights.

That being said the origin story of my research path is above all thanks to Kriszta Kovács, who made it possible for me to set off in a socio-legal direction of research in a faculty where this was not conventional. I started exploring what societal mechanism might explain why the provision on hate crimes in the Hungarian Criminal Code was applied against Roma more often than for their protection (NB: this was in 2012 shortly after a serial attack against Roma families in Hungary). Anti-discrimination measures in their societal context remained with me as a main focus. The rest of my topic choices were influenced by for example Eszter Polgári’s seminars on ‘Ill-treatment and death at the European Court of Human Rights’, where I came across the case that would inspire my topic selection, and Mathias Möschel’s course on ‘Race and Law in Europe’ that would provide its theoretical framework. It was during this research for my first master thesis that I stumbled upon Marie-Benedicte Dembour’s chapter on ‘Post-colonial denial’ a theory about the Strasbourg Court’s attitudes towards cases from Eastern-European states, which is when the relevance of socio-legal scholarship really clicked for me. I am extremely privileged to be able to conduct my doctoral research under her supervision and mentorship, and I am very grateful to all these people for their conscious and accidental inspirations they provided me.

3. In the field of Human Rights, what would you say are the toughest challenges one faces when raising awareness of key issues? If you have had any challenges, it would be a great insight for students.

There are certainly a lot of challenges no matter which area of human rights you work on. I think in general the moral imperative of human rights work, the belief that you are doing something good for your fellow human beings can help overcome a lot of day-to-day difficulties, such as the skepticism about or sometimes even denial of the legitimacy of the issues you are trying to alleviate. Beyond that I’m afraid that I can’t say I have developed a great method to deal with personal challenges, these can just be incredibly hard sometimes. Being aware of the toll it can take on you to work in a field concerned with very difficult human situations without easily achieving great breakthroughs and big rewards may already be enough to prepare yourself for days when you feel particularly disheartened...

4. During your career, you have worked both in the academic environment (as a Student Assistant, Teacher Assistant and Admissions Support Officer) as well as in various international organisations. Are there any important differences in the nature of work in these fields that students should consider while choosing a path suitable for them?

Doing research has always excited me, so even within the NGOs where I worked I’ve had positions that involved research. Certainly academic research and research for the activities of an NGO are different. One example of these differences is the pace of your work: during a 4 year PhD I have the luxury to take my time to read many different sources about the same small element of my research, and also to write and re-write a piece I am working on. This is definitely not the case when you have pressing deadlines to send a report to printing or issue a statement about an unfolding event. Your audience differs too: arguably there is a more diverse readership to a thematic report on a specific human rights issue than to a theoretical article published in an academic journal. The two may influence each other though, and I think the experience from one area is more and more appreciated by the other. There is even a word for people who do both: a pracademic, who is both an academic and a practitioner in their field.

5. Shortly after your finishing your first Master's degree, you became involved with noteworthy organisations, such as Menedék Hungarian Association for Migrants or Demokratikus Jogok Fejlesztésért Alapítvány (DemNet) Foundation. Do you have any tips for students and future alumni on how to prepare for such positions and how to increase the chance to get the opportunity of working with such organisations?

I started volunteering with Amnesty Hungary when I was still in high school. At this point I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study, so it was not the subject of human rights that drew me in, but the work itself: I volunteered to be a translator with the aim of practicing my English. It was only later that I became involved in the substantive work of the organization, which then also inspired a lot my future research. Through this volunteering opportunity I became familiar with various human rights and civil society organizations, including the ones I would later work with. Being already familiar with the work of these NGOs as well as some of their staff members undeniably played a role in getting my first jobs. Volunteering is an excellent opportunity to build networks, learn about new things, and acquire invaluable skills, so I would definitely

6. On top of your work and studies, you have obtained some additional qualifications through courses such as “Leading Change through Policymaking” or “Understanding the GDPR”. Do you consider these additional qualifications helpful in your day-to-day career? Do you believe they were crucial to your success while applying for professional positions?

I really believe in the importance of learning and re-learning things. Or to put it in other words, I don’t think that once you learn something, you will know it for good. If you quizzed me about the content of the GDPR course right now, I would probably fail. But it was not the point of taking the class to become a data protection expert. I wanted to be more aware of the new rules that could potentially influence the way I handle data in my research. Learning about the developments in your professional field, and also more broadly, is definitely something that will help your career, because you’ll learn to learn things more quickly and work more efficiently. And if you do find a live course, it is also a great way of connecting to people who have the same professional interests or needs. So to sum up, it is not necessarily the qualification itself that is the most valuable thing you can get out of a course.

7. As you have experience working for the Utrecht Journal of International and European Law, what tips would you give to the students who have little experience in writing articles and would like to submit their work to the ILSA journal?

A piece of advice that doctoral researchers always get, and for good reason, is to ask a few other people to read and comment on your work. This helps tremendously with the editing process when you eventually submit your paper, and you can get a lot of inspiration from discussing your ideas with others. If you want to step it up, another great opportunity is to volunteer as an editor of a professional blog or a student-run journal: an excellent way to improve your own writing is by reading and reviewing others’ work (not to mention the opportunity to get to know a lot of people in the process).