DrTauhid Bin Kashem

Dr. Tauhid Bin Kashem is a political scientist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sutherland School of Law. His current work examines how international refugee law shapes state behavior and refugee protection across countries and over time. This work is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and is part of the RefLex project.

Tauhid's broader research focuses on international organizations, forced migration, and institutional change. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine. Before joining UCD, he was affiliated with UC Berkeley’s Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI). A central strand of his research examines the “non-signatory puzzle”: why states that have not joined the UN Refugee Convention nevertheless host a substantial share of the world’s refugees. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, he shows how states in the Global South strategically navigate overlapping international regimes to shape refugee protection and security. Much of this work focuses on divergent state responses to Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

His work has received the Lynne Rienner Award from the International Studies Association (ISA) (2026), and the Best Dissertation Award (2025) from the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Migration and Citizenship section. His research has also been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), among others.