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Heather McRobie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heather Katharine McRobie, also known professionally as Heather Allansdottir,[1] is a British-Australian[2] writer, academic, founder of the space consultancy Astrodottir and 2024 Fellowship Candidate at Newspeak House.

Early life and education

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She studied Modern History and Politics at Oxford University before going on to pursue further studies at the University of Sarajevo and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her move from Oxford to Montreal, aged 22, was allegedly inspired by her love of the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.[3][4]

During her time as an undergraduate at Oxford University, she was a member of the comedy group The Oxford Imps[5] and published creative writing in the May Anthologies collections in 2006[6] and 2007.[7] Whilst at sixth form, in 2003 she organised protests against the Iraq war with her classmate Samir Jeraj, the New Statesman journalist.[8] She is a former housemate of Laurie Penny, the British journalist and author.

Career

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Dr Allansdottir primarily works on space law, having started as an academic in human rights and constitutional law. She completed a doctorate[9] in comparative constitutional law and human rights law, focused on the Egyptian constitutions[10] since the 2011 Egyptian revolution, at the Oxford Law Faculty.[11] She also worked for human rights NGOs in Jordan and Berlin.

She held post-doctoral positions in Tel Aviv[12] and Moscow,[13] before moving to Reykjavík to begin her current work[14] on the Icelandic constitution.[15]

McRobie's debut novel Psalm 119 (2008),[16] published when the author was 23,[17] was awarded the Helene du Coudray Prize.[18] Her first non-fiction book, Literary Freedom: a Cultural Right to Literature, came out in 2013.[19]

In a wide-ranging journalistic career, she has written for the Guardian, Al Jazeera, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Salon, Foreign Policy, and The Globe and Mail, among many other publications.[20] She was also an editor of the online outlet openDemocracy. Her non-academic writing has focused on politics, society, conflict and human rights across the UK, the Balkans, Middle East and former Soviet Union.[21] In an interview in 2018,[22] she said she would like to continue writing both fiction and non-fiction. Her first book on space law, New Perspectives in Outer Space Law, co-authored with Naman Anand, will be published by Springer in 2025.

In 2019, she was a semi-finalist for the Julia Child Fellowship at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school.[23] According to an interview in 2019, she can speak some Arabic, French, Russian, Mandarin and Icelandic but is only fluent in English.[15] Elsewhere she has written satirically on her failure to become proficient in other languages.[24]

As an academic, she currently researches and lectures on constitutional law, human rights law,[25] and the philosophy of law, and is completing a book on comparative constitutional law.[15] In 2021, she has mentioned her developing interest in space law.[26][27][28]

In 2022, she joined The University of Law as an Academic Tutor, and as of 2024 is a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, and lectures on law at Birkbeck University in London, where she is Deputy Director of LLB and LLM.

References

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  1. ^ "Heather Katharine Allansdottir | University of Oxford - Academia.edu". oxford.academia.edu.
  2. ^ FM, Player. "Dr Heather Katherine McRobie - on a life of perpetual learning" – via player.fm.[permanent dead link]
  3. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Heather Allansdottir. YouTube.
  4. ^ "In Which We Winter In Montreal - Home - This Recording". thisrecording.com.
  5. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Punchup Episode 2 - Heather Allansdóttir. YouTube.
  6. ^ https://archive.varsity.co.uk/658.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  7. ^ O'Brien, Sean; Tóibín, Colm; Mobbs, Iain; Duric, Cath; Roark, Ryan (23 June 2007). Mays 15 - 2007. Varsity Publications Ltd. ISBN 9780902240438 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ "The February 15, 2003 protest ten years on: Reflections on a decade".
  9. ^ "Administrative and Constitutional Law". 16 September 2015.
  10. ^ YouTube, a Google company. YouTube. Archived from the original on 13 February 2021.
  11. ^ http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,heather%20mcrobie&tab=local&search_scope=LSCOP_ALL&vid=SOLO&lang=en_US&offset=0 [dead link]
  12. ^ "Visiting Scholars From Previous Years". en-law.tau.ac.il.
  13. ^ "From Revolution to Constitution: Law and politics in Egypt since 2011". 24 March 2017.
  14. ^ "Líta á hvern nemanda sem einstakling en ekki kennitölu". Skessuhorn. 22 August 2019.
  15. ^ a b c "Meet Dr Heather McRobie our new full-time Associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law". Bifrost.is.
  16. ^ "Review: Psalm 119 by Heather McRobie". the Guardian. 29 August 2008.
  17. ^ https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-jewish-chronicle/20070601/282076272444434 – via PressReader. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  18. ^ "Helene du Coudray Prize". www.maiapress.com.
  19. ^ "StackPath". www.johnhuntpublishing.com.
  20. ^ "Justice delayed". 22 April 2022.
  21. ^ "Podcast 3/23/2017". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  22. ^ "SoundCloud - Hear the world's sounds".
  23. ^ "Julia Child Scholarship Semi-Finalists | Le Cordon Bleu London". cordonbleu.edu.
  24. ^ "How to screw up in Arabic". Salon. 8 September 2012.
  25. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Human Rights and Judaism with Dr. Heather Allansdottir and Rabbi Feldman. YouTube.
  26. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Lifestyle with Dr. Mobi .. Guest: Heather Allansdottir. YouTube.
  27. ^ "Heather Katharine McRobie, Space Lawyer! - the MindGlue Podcast". 28 January 2021.
  28. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Punchup Episode 2 - Heather Allansdóttir. YouTube.