Severyna joined St Mary’s University, in 2023 and is Course Lead for the postgraduate Human Rights degree. Her research interests focus on equality, violence against women, specifically domestic abuse and sexual assault, reproductive rights, sexual harassment, and access to justice. Severyna obtained a Masters in International Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2008, and has worked with NGOs in the UK and India. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 2020.
Prior to joining St Mary’s she was the Course Leader for the MA/LLM Applied Human Rights degree at Sheffield Hallam University. Prior to this she founded and was the Faculty Co-ordinator of the Human Rights Law and Theory programme for over four years at Jindal Global Law School, India's leading private law school, as ranked by QS World University Subject Rankings 2020. During her time at JGLS, Severyna co-developed a new policy against sexual harassment and was the founding Member-Secretary of the Committee Against Sexual Harassment. She was the Project Manager for a Women's Social Integration project in East London funded by the UK Home Office and European Commission. The project provided service delivery to vulnerable women who were experiencing or re-building their lives after having experienced domestic violence or forced marriage. In India she was a Researcher and Co-ordinator for a UN Women funded project researching access to gender-sensitive, rights-based justice through traditional forms of justice. Severyna also guest lectures on the University of California, Berkeley's comparative equality and discrimination online module delivered to students across the world.