Sharmansr, Ishita

Ishita Sharmansr is a PhD Fellow at UNU-CRIS under the Migration and Social Policy Cluster and the Nature, Climate and Health Cluster, and at Ghent University within the Migration Law Research Group. She is the recipient of a BOF–UNU-CRIS scholarship supporting her doctoral research.

Originally from Nawanshahr, Punjab, India, she completed her BA LLB before being awarded the Flemish Government’s Master Mind Scholarship to pursue an LLM in International and European Human Rights Law at Ghent University. Her master’s research examined the European Union’s responsibility toward climate-induced displacement, focusing on the challenge of multi-causality and the role of scientific evidence in shaping migration law and policy. Building on these insights, her PhD project, supervised by Ellen Desmet and co-supervised by Nidhi Nagabhatla, addresses the difficulty of protecting climate-induced displaced people in multi-causal contexts by developing a novel policy support system that bridges refugee law with environmental science.

Her research integrates the refugee law standard of a “well-founded fear of persecution” with environmental science risk indicators to establish clear thresholds for when protection should be triggered. The outcome of this research will provide a policy tool that can assist regional bodies, international organisations, and governments in shaping more consistent protection responses to climate-induced displacement.