Dr Hayes de Kalaf was one of the first PhD students to graduate from the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) on a Comparative Statecraft Studentship Award (2014-2018). During her time at the University of Aberdeen, she was awarded the Principal’s Excellence Award, the Isabella Middleton Scholarship and the David Nicholls Memorial Trust Award, among other accolades. After a brief stint as a Visiting Scholar and teaching at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, she completed a postdoc at the School of Law and Social Justice and was later based at the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool.
Dr Hayes de Kalaf subsequently secured a competitive Early Career Fellowship at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London. Remaining at the institution, she has been a research fellow at both the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS) and the Institute of Historical Research (IHR). Dr Hayes de Kalaf is currently lecturer at SAS, leading key aspects of Research Training with a focus on the IHR, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) and the School’s wider Short Course and Summer School portfolio. She is also convenor of the popular CLACS Caribbean Studies Seminar Series, an initiative supported by the Society for Caribbean Studies.
Dr Hayes de Kalaf’s critically acclaimed monograph ‘Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner’, published with a Foreword by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican American author Junot Díaz (2023), was based on her doctoral research at CISRUL. The book examines how states can manufacture, block or deny access to citizens – including the migrant-descended – to their documentation. Her recent work on the AHRC-funded project ‘The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context’ included extensive empirical research and oral history interviews across Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. In November 2025, Dr Hayes de Kalaf will be travelling to Lagos, Nigeria to give the keynote address at the 7th Privacy Symposium Africa (PSA 2025). PSA is premier platform for the most pressing issues in data protection and digital governance, bringing together leading experts, regulators, policymakers, civil society actors, legal professionals, and industry leaders.
Before commencing her PhD, Dr Hayes de Kalaf lived and worked in Latin America and the Caribbean for many years working in the fields of government consultancy, international development and communications. A bilingual English/Spanish speaker and working-class scholar, Dr Hayes de Kalaf is an active campaigner against precarity and casualisation in higher education. She is a fiercely proud single mum to her daughter Leila who regularly accompanies her to work events and conferences.
Recent publications
- Reframing the Windrush Scandal as an International Statelessness Crisis, The Statelessness & Citizenship Review 6(2) pp. 179-196. (2025)
- What price inclusion when academic conferences remain child-free zones? / Are academia and motherhood incompatible? Times Higher Education (Jan/Oct 2024)
- Digital Identity: Emerging Trends, Debates and Controversies. Women In Identity. Co-authored with Kimberly Fernandes, University of Pennsylvania (May, 2023)
- Anger as Home Secretary ditches key review recommendations, failing Windrush scandal survivors and campaigners, History & Policy (Jan 2023)
- A New Expression of Dominicanidad: The Dominican ID Card, Technology and Race. In Jiménez Polanco, J., & Sagás, E. Dominican Politics in the Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change. London: Routledge (Jan 2023)
- How some countries are using digital ID to exclude vulnerable people around the world, The Conversation (Aug 2021)
- Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner, Anthem Series in Citizenship and National Identities. Foreword by Junot Díaz (Feb 2023/Nov 2021). Available for download via Cambridge University Press here.
- Making Foreign: Legal Identity, Social Policy and the Contours of Belonging in the Contemporary Dominican Republic’, in Cruz-Martínez, G. (ed.) Welfare and Social Protection in Contemporary Latin America. London: Routledge (Jan 2019)