Profile
Portia Mbabazi Karegeya

Portia Mbabazi KAREGEYA

PhD Candidate International Law
Doctorant Assistant, Hoffmann Centre for Global Sustainability
Spoken languages
English, French, Spanish

PHD
 

PhD Thesis Title: Infectious disease-related Stigma and the International Health Regulations

PhD Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Anne Saab

This thesis proposes an investigation into historical emotional frames about infectious disease and how they became, and may remain, encoded in the International Health Regulations (IHR) and its predecessors. It traces how, within the legal structure of global health governance, these frames produce or reproduce stigma. This project is interdisciplinary and part of socio-legal studies, combining traditional doctrinal analysis with Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA). It will utilise theoretical frameworks from cultural and political science studies as analytical tools and use qualitative data software (MAXQDA) to code and trace how early hierarchies and their emotional frames became embedded in international public health governance approaches, beginning with the 19th-century International Sanitary Conventions to the current IHR (2005). 

Short Biography: Portia Mbabazi Karegeya joined the Graduate Institute in 2023 to pursue a PhD in Emotions and International law where her work will be focused on stigma and shame in relation to infectious diseases and the role of global health law. She holds two LLMs, one from McGill University and the other from University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles) where she was a Sonke Health and Human Rights Fellow. Prior to joining academia, Portia also worked as a Judicial Law Clerk at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, as a contractor on legal and policy matters under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety with the UN Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), and as a as a Legal Officer for The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) based in Halifax, Canada conducting legal research and human rights advocacy with respect to freedom of expression and access to information. She is also a member of the New York State Bar Association.
 

PROFILE


Portia Mbabazi Karegeya joined the Graduate Institute in 2023 to pursue a PhD in Emotions and International law where her work will be focused on stigma and shame in relation to infectious diseases and the role of global health law. She holds two LLMs, one from McGill University and the other from University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles) where she was a Sonke Health and Human Rights Fellow. Prior to joining academia, Portia also worked as a Judicial Law Clerk at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, as a contractor on legal and policy matters under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety with the UN Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), and as a as a Legal Officer for The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) based in Halifax, Canada conducting legal research and human rights advocacy with respect to freedom of expression and access to information. She is also a member of the New York State Bar Association.
 

Areas of expertise
 

  • Global Health LAW
     

Selected publications and Works
 

Journal Articles

 

Current Projects