“As someone in the field, the Essex human rights program has long been the gold standard,” said Mark Gibney, professor of political science at UNC Asheville and a nationally and internationally recognized human rights scholar. “It is the first human rights graduate program in the world and virtually everyone I know in the human rights field has gone through the 12 month program.”
After graduating from UNC Asheville in May 2023, Appleby and Frose leapt across the pond to expand their studies at Essex’s interdisciplinary Human Rights Centre, the UK’s leading center for the study of the theory and practice of international human rights. As part of her coursework, Appleby works with the Human Rights Centre Clinic on a report for the grassroots organization Citizens UK about changing UK immigration law.
Students from around the world and of all ages attend class, with many already active in the human rights field. About half the students in Appleby’s refugee law class are lawyers.
Appleby says her career path was driven by her work at UNC Asheville on the Political Terror Scale project, an internationally regarded coding scale for human rights violations headed by Gibney, as well as her involvement with Dignity, the UNC System’s first student-run human rights journal.
This is not UNC Asheville’s first cup of tea. The Essex human rights program has accepted UNC Asheville graduates for decades, and UNC Asheville is the only American university to have a joint degree program with Essex.
“An American friend of mine who teaches at Essex once told me that if she hears a U.S. accent she immediately comes to the conclusion that this is one of ‘Gibney's students,’ and she is invariably right,” said Gibney.
The joint degree program gives political science students the opportunity to earn a Bachelor’s degree from UNC Asheville and a master’s degree from Essex in 4.5 years.
Alexla Pérez-Sánchez, the first graduate from the joint degree program, now works as a research associate at Inclusive Development International.
Appleby plans to continue her work with refugee rights after graduating from Essex.
“I’m doing a project with asylum seekers right now, and I took a class on refugee law at UNCA and another here at Essex, and so I’m really passionate about working with refugees,” said Appleby. “We need more people who really care about doing this work.”
© 2026 UNC Asheville
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