Heather Alexander is an expert on nationality law, citizenship, statelessness and human rights. She is the co-founder (with Jonathan Simon) of the Lab for the Future of Citizenship, focusing on the intersection between citizenship law, legal identity and the person-like qualities of artificial intelligence.

She has a JD from Golden Gate University and a PhD in international law from Tilburg University, as well as fifteen years of experience as an expert consultant on statelessness and refugee law with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Carleton University, the University of Melbourne, the European University Institute and the US State Department. She has worked in Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, Australia, Chad, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, Gabon and the United States. She began her career as an asylum lawyer with UNHCR and is a former US Peace Corps Volunteer. Her book, The Nationality and Statelessness of Nomadic Peoples Under International Law (OUP 2025) is the first global analysis of the right to a nationality for nomadic peoples.

Heather was a founding board member of United Stateless, an advocacy network for stateless people in the US, and a former board member of the Canadian Centre on Statelessness. She has been a member in good standing of the District of Columbia Bar Association since 2006.

Publications:

Alexander, Simon and Pinard, "How Should the Law Treat Future AI Systems? Fictional Legal Personhood versus Legal Identity" (forthcoming in the Case Western Reserve University Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet)

The Nationality and Statelessness of Nomadic Peoples Under International Law, Oxford University Press 2025.

Gender and Statelessness in Bjorkquist et al vs. Attorney General of Canada, Statelessness and Citizenship Review 2024 (with Jocelyn Kane).

Keeping Statelessness on the Agenda at the Global Refugee Forum and Beyond, Statelessness and Citizenship Review 6(1), 137-142 (2024).

Identité juridique et préservation du nomadisme comme mode de vie : les hommes Foulbé en Côte d’Ivoire (online).

Those Fleeing States Destroyed by Climate Change Are Convention Refugees (with Jonathan Simon) Biblioteca della libertà (2024).

Review of “Statelessness Determination Procedures and the Right to a Nationality: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective,” By Solomon Oseghale Momoh, Book Review, Statelessness and Citizenship Review Special Issue.

The United Nations and Robot Rights, Comment, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, 20 Can. J. L. & Tech. 257 (2023).

Mentoring new voices in forced migration publishing, 70 Forced Migration Review (2022) (with James Milner and Alice Philip).

The Ethics of Counting Statelessness, in ‘Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship’ T. Bloom and L. N. Kingston, eds, Manchester UP, (2021).

Nomads and the Struggle for a Legal Identity, 2 Statelessness and Citizenship Rev. 338 (2020).

The U.S. Supreme Court in ‘Sessions v. Morales-Santana’: Preventing Statelessness for Children Born Abroad, 1(2) Statelessness and Citizenship Review 330 (2019).

"The Open Sky or a Brick and Mortar School? Statelessness, Education and Nomadic Children," World's Stateless Report, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, (2017)

"No Port, No Passport: Why Submerged States Can Have No Nationals," Wash. Int'l L. J. 26.2 (2017) (with Jonathan Simon)

"'Unable to Return' in the 1951 Refugee Convention: Stateless Refugees and Climate Change," 26 Fl. J. of Int'l L. 531 (2014) (with Jonathan Simon) 

"Sinking Into Statelessness," 19 Tilburg U. L. Rev. 20 (2014) (with Jonathan Simon)

"Justice for Rwanda: Toward a Universal Law of Armed Conflict," 34 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. (2004) 

Other:

Ohio’s AI personhood ban risks outlawing the future (with Jonathan Simon) November 2025.

Grâce aux nouvelles technologies de communication, la lutte contre l'apatridie est de plus en plus portée par les personnes concernées, et pas seulement par des experts, (August 23, 2022, Société québécoise de droit international)

Refugee advocates are losing the war of ideas, News Deeply, 2017.

Her Erdős Number is 6.