Margherita Tommasini

Dr. Margherita Tommasini graduated in Italian and French Law with honours at the Università degli Studi di Firenze in October 2020, also earning the titles of Licence, Maîtrise en Droit, mentions Droits français et italien and Master 2 Juriste international at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

In the academic year 2019-2020, she pursued an LL.M in International Law and Justice at Fordham University School of Law in New York City.

She passed the New York bar examination in the July 2021 session.

During her studies, she obtained a curricular internship at the Commissione territorial per il riconoscimento della protezione internazionale (Territorial Commission for the Recognition of International Protection) of Florence, dealing, among other tasks, with the drafting of decisions on requests for international protection, and another curricular internship at the Sportello Immigrati (Immigrants Desk) of CGIL in Florence, where she provided legal and administrative assistance in the procedures for the renewal of residence permits, citizenship applications and family reunion.

From January 2020 to June 2020 she joined the Legal and Policy Team of the Human Rights Foundation (New York), conducting research on political dissidents and authoritarian regimes, which allowed the organization to submit a case to the attention of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

During her second semester of LL.M., she designed and taught a course at Fordham University School of Law on the Italian legal system and the constitutional protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Among her volunteering activities, she provided legal assistance to asylum-seeking families detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center (Texas), in-person and remotely. She also provided legal support in a complex Special Visa Application (SIV) case by an Afghan U.S. Army aide.

Following graduation, she undertook an extracurricular internship in Paris at the law firm of Me Guillerot, specialized in asylum law, participating in the drafting of applications against decisions to reject asylum requests issued by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) and assisting asylum seekers throughout the proceedings before the National Court of Asylum Law (CNDA).

She is currently Deputy Head of the Europe Zone at the Observatoire des réfugiés (Paris), where she is in charge of coordinating volunteers’ contributions to reports on refugee camps in Europe.

She also carries out research for IRAP Europe about the French jurisprudence on family reunification for Afghan, Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali citizens.

Since October 2021, she’s a trainee lawyer at the firm Lana – Lagostena Bassi – Rosi, where she mainly deals with international litigation and human rights protection.

She also collaborates with the Unione Forense per la Tutela dei Diritti Umani.