Adelaide Lyall
Adelaide Lyall
Adelaide Lyall, from Saco, Maine, is completing an M.S. in Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she recently graduated with a B.A. with Honors in Sociology and a minor in Hispanic Studies. Adelaide has worked to protect and expand civil rights for immigrants and incarcerated people, both in her home state of Maine and nationally. Before starting college, Adelaide worked for four years as an immigration legal assistant on asylum cases, as a field organizer for the Maine Democratic Party, and as a volunteer for Al Otro Lado at the US-Mexico border.
At Penn, she was recognized as a Dean’s Scholar, Benjamin Franklin Scholar, and an Andrea Mitchell Undergraduate Research Fellow. Her senior thesis, “We left a great life: African Immigrant Incorporation in Maine,” which analyzes the experience of African asylum seekers in southern Maine, won the E. Digby Baltzell Award for Outstanding Senior Thesis in Sociology. She has interned with the American Civil Liberties Union, Office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, National Consumer Law Center, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, and The Liberation Foundation. Currently, Adelaide volunteers as a mitigation fellow for the Youth Advocacy Project at Penn Law, where she works with young people charged as adults in Philadelphia.
As a Marshall Scholar, Adelaide hopes to gain a deeper understanding of how the implementation of digital technologies into the immigration and criminal legal systems affects civil rights. She intends to pursue degrees in Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Digital Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.