Yael Schacher is the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. Prior to joining Refugees International, Yael researched the relationship between immigration and refugee policy for her forthcoming book on the history of asylum in the U.S. since the late nineteenth century. She taught at the University of Connecticut and lectured on immigration history and refugee policy at Harvard Law School, the University of Minnesota, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt and numerous academic conferences and public forums. While teaching at UConn, Yael helped with asylum and humanitarian visa cases at the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants. While a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin just before starting at Refugees International, Yael combined historical research on asylum and advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers (with the law school’s immigration clinic and with the organization Justice for Our Neighbors).

Yael has an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University and a B.A. in literature from Columbia University.