University of Oregon School of Law

Faculty > Michelle McKinley

Assistant Professor

Contact
Room 311
Phone: (541) 346-5191
Email Michelle McKinley

Courses
Immigration Law
Law, Culture and Society
Refugee and Asylum Law
Law Culture & Society
International Law
Refugee & Asylum Law

Michelle McKinley is Assistant Professor of Law. She teaches Law, Culture & Society, Immigration Law, Public International Law, and Refugee & Asylum Law. Professor McKinley attended Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and graduated cum laude in 1995. Professor McKinley also holds a Masters Degree in Social Anthropology from Oxford University. Upon graduating from Harvard, Prof. McKinley served as the Managing Director of Cultural Survival, an advocacy and research organization dedicated to indigenous peoples. In 1995, Prof. McKinley founded and directed the Amazonian Peoples' Resources Initiative, a community based reproductive rights organization in Peru where she worked for nine years as an advocate for global health and human rights. Most recently, Professor McKinley was Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, where she taught International Human Rights Law, Immigration Law, Refugee and Asylum Law, and Torts, from 2004-2007.

Professor McKinley has published extensively on international law, human rights, reproductive rights, and immigration issues. She is currently working on a research project which examines the ways in which disenfranchised lower-caste and enslaved women engaged with the colonial legal system in the Peruvian viceroyalty, drawing parallels and distinctions regarding the potential use of courts as a conduit of freedom and social justice, and the ways in which church and state acted in tandem to control sexuality and female behavior, and to police the bounds of interracial relationships.