Global Health Tuesday Webinar: Climate Change & Global Displacement

Join the Global Health Institute (GHI) for our October Global Health Tuesday Webinar on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 9am CDT, where the discussion will focus on Climate Change & Global Displacement.

Sumudu Atapattu, Teaching Professor & Director, Global Legal Studies Center, University of Wisconsin Law School leads the discussion with panelists Kayly Ober, Visiting Scholar, Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Elizabeth G. Ferris, Senior Fellow, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University; and David Cantor, Director & Professor of Refugee Law, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Please use this Zoom link to register.

MEET THE MODERATOR:

Sumudu Atapattu is Teaching Professor and Director of the Global Legal Studies Center at University of Wisconsin Law School. She is affiliated with UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Global Health Institute, and the Center for South Asia, and is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program. She is also the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law, and affiliated faculty at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, Sweden. She has published widely on climate change and human rights, climate refugees,  international environmental law, and environmental justice including several books. 

MEET THE PANELISTS:

Kayly Ober is a visiting scholar with the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to joining Carnegie, she served as the first-ever senior climate security advisor at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, where she helped design the Department’s climate security strategy and coordinated the data analytics workstream for the U.S. Climate Mobility Plan of Action. She previously was the senior program officer for climate, environment, and conflict at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the senior advocate and program manager of the climate displacement program at Refugees International. From 2020 to 2022, she was a member of the Task Force on Displacement under the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. She has also held research and advisory roles with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, ODI Global, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Kayly is co-author of Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, the World Bank’s flagship report on future climate mobility, and Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2025). She holds a BA from American University and an MSc from the London School of Economics and is completing her PhD in geography at the University of Bonn.

Elizabeth G. Ferris is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. In 2016, she also served as Senior Advisor to the UN General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and spent 20 years working in the field of humanitarian assistance, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Council of Churches. She has written extensively on humanitarian issues, including Consequences of Chaos: Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis and the Failure to Protect, with Kemal Kirsici (Brookings Institution Press, 2016). Her latest book – Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts (with Katharine Donato) was published by Routledge in July 2019. She received her BA degree from Duke University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Florida.

Professor David Cantor, PhD, is founder and Director of the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with 25 years’ experience of research, advice and advocacy on refugee and IDP law and policy.

Since founding the RLI in 2011, David has developed it into a internationally-recognised centre of expertise and global leadership on refugee and IDP law and policy involving 500+ people, including core staff, tutors, fellows, affiliates, students, clinical legal practitioners and pro bono lawyers. David has led the work of the centre in building its vibrant research affiliate networks and working groups and regional research networks in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. At the RLI, he has developed a range of external partnerships, secured over £9 million of competitive research funding, and organised over 150 RLI conferences, workshops, trainings and seminars.