Sophie Capicchiano Young is a legal scholar working at the intersection of Public International Law and International Refugee Law. She is a 2024 recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action for her research on ‘State Responsibility for the Death and Disappearance of Refugees and Migrants,’ hosted by the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway. She is the author of State Responsibility and International Refugee Law: History, Theory, and Application (Brill 2025), and co-chair of the American Society of International Law's Migration Law Interest Group.

Her research has been published in the International Journal of Refugee Law, the Asian Journal of International Law, the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, and the European Journal of Migration and Law. She is the editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, on ‘Protection in Practice: Perspectives from the ‘Global South.’’ She will contribute a chapter to the Edward Elgar Handbook on State Responsibility in the 21st Century on ‘Decolonisation and the Codification of State Responsibility’ (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). 

Dr Capicchiano Young's research concerns the theory and application of International Refugee Law, refugee protection at the US-Mexico border and throughout Central America.  She has worked for the R4V Platform, the University of London, the Graduate Institute of Geneva, UNHCR, and the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. 

She received her PhD in Public International Law from School of Advanced Study, University of London, her Masters in International Law of Armed Conflict from Geneva Academy, and her Juris Doctor from RMIT University. She also has a Masters in Applied Linguistics from Monash University. She is a barred solicitor in Victoria, Australia.