Laura-Stella Enonchong

Dr Laura-Stella Enonchong is a Senior Lecturer in Law. Her research interests are in the field of comparative constitutional studies, international and regional human rights and the African Human Rights System.

Her recent scholarship has focused on constitutional governance in Cameroon, presidential term limits amendments and the right to personal liberty under regional and international human rights frameworks. She is the author of The Constitution and Governance in Cameroon (Routledge 2021), and co-editor of Democracy in Africa: Regression and Resilience (Juta 2022). She is the principal investigator for a British Academy funded project on conflict transformation in which she applied socio-legal methods to explore the agency of courts in conflict transformation, with a particular focus on the new Common Law Division in the Supreme Court of Cameroon.

In 2022, Laura was appointed Distinguished Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Programme at the University of Texas at Austin, in recognition of the ‘strength of the excellence, impact, and innovation’ of her research contributions to constitutional studies. She is the Secretary General of the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers (ANCL) and member of the Steering Committee of the International Association of Public Law (ICON-S) Africa Interest Group. Prior to joining SOAS Law School, Laura was senior lecturer at Leicester De Montfort Law School, and previously, associate lecturer at Warwick Law School.

Laura acts as expert consultant and has provided advice to international and regional organisations such as the World Bank, the African Union Commission and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), on issues of constitutionalism in Africa, independence of the judiciary, human rights, and refugees. She provided advice on measures to strengthen judicial independence in Chad, as part of a broader programme coordinated by IDEA) to support Chad’s democratic transition process. She was consulted by the Kingdom of Morocco’s permanent mission to the United Nations on the devolution of judicial powers in territorially autonomous regions. As part of the ANCL, she contributed actively to developing and disseminating strategies to promote presidential term limits adherence in Africa, through a project funded by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI).

Laura has also contributed to civil society organisations in Birmingham working with refugees. These include the Refugee Action, where she worked on the CARE Project, and the Birmingham Refugee Council, where she worked on the ‘Women’s Project’, winning the regional Marsh Awards for designing a project on social integration of refugees in Birmingham.