Robert Koulish, Ph.D. served as the founding Director of MLAW Programs in 2014-2026.
Dr. Koulish earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin and his Bachelors degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied politics and philosophy. He has traveled to and conducted research in Central Europe and along the U.S. Mexico border, investigating human rights abuses, refugees and patterns and practices of social control within legal institutions. He has written extensively about the criminalization of immigration.
Dr. Koulish is co-author of Detaining Immigrants, Scoring Criminals (2025), Crimmigrant Nations: Resurgent Nationalism and the Closing of Borders (Fordham University Press, 2020), with Maartje van der Woude, and Immigration and American Democracy, Subverting the Rule of Law (Routledge Press, 2009). He also has authored numerous peer reviewed academic articles, law review articles, book chapters, and op-ed columns. He has conducted research on immigration at the US-Mexico Border, and minority rights of Roma in Hungary. Koulish has taken students to the U.S.-Mexico border at Ciudad Juarez-El Paso and the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas, and to Roma settlements around Budapest. Koulish is a founding member of CINETS--Crimmigration Control International Net of Studies (http://www.crimmigrationcontrol.com), a growing network of critical immigration law scholars, which hosts bi-annual international conferences, book volumes and research collaborations.
