Fellows

Visiting Fellow

Biography inDamon Barrettis the Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, which he co-founded in 2009. He is recognised internationally for his leading work in the areas of human rights and drug control, with a focus on systemic incoherence between these regimes; human rights and the international institutions of drug control; harm reduction and the right to health; and drug policy and the rights of the child. Mr Barrett regularly delivers lectures and publishes on these and other topics.

Visiting Fellow

David Beetham has written extensively on democracy and human rights, including economic and social rights. He is Associate Director and a major contributor and author for the UK Democratic Audit, which is based in the Human Rights Centre. He has recently directed a comparative programme of democracy and human rights assessment for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm. He holds the position of Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds.

Visiting Fellow

Bill Bowring has done much to enhance the activities of the Centre, and even though he re-located first to London Metropolitan University, and now to Birkbeck, University of London, he continues to provide assistance to the Centre, both as a human rights expert and a teacher. As Professor of Human Rights at London Met he created the Research Institute for Human Rights and Social Justice, and in 2002 he created and is Chair of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC). He is now Professor of Law at Birkbeck.

Visiting Fellow

Rachel Brett is a graduate of the LLM and former lecturer on the MA degree. She was responsible for the initiation of the Centre's project on the Organisation on Co-operation and Security in Europe (OSCE) and published a series of reports through Essex on the human rights mandate and work of this intergovernmental organisation. She now runs the Human Rights and Refugee Programme of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, which undertakes research and lobbying before the UN human rights and refugee bodies in particular on conscientious objection to military service, women in prison and children of imprisoned mothers, child soldiers, and refugee protection.

Visiting Fellow

Iain Byrne is a former graduate of the MA from 1994 and has been working in various capacities with the Centre ever since. Iain Byrne is the Chairman of the International Justice Resource Centre Board of Directors, and policy adviser on economic, social and cultural rights with Amnesty International. Previously, he was acting Legal Practice Director and Senior Lawyer with lead responsibility for leading litigation work on economic and social rights at INTERIGHTS, the international centre for the legal protection of human rights, based in London. He has taught on both the LLM and MA Human Rights Modules focusing on economic, social and cultural rights. 

Visiting Fellow

Basak Çali is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at University College London. Her main areas of research are the interpretation and implementation of international human rights law, and the legitimacy of international human rights institutions, with a focus on the European Human Rights system. She is also interested in international legal theory, inter-disciplinary analysis of human rights, the law on the use of force and the law of international peacekeeping. Başak holds an MA in International Peacekeeping and a PhD in International Law from the University of Essex. She has been involved with the Human Rights Centre since 1996 as part of research projects, amongst others, the European Court of Human Rights Litigation Project and the Reservations to Human Rights Treaties Project, and as visiting lecturer in International Law and the International Law of Peacekeeping.

Visiting Fellow

Christina Cerna, is a lecturer at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C. She is also active on the Board of International Legal Materials (part of the ASIL) and as chair of the International Human Rights Law Committee of the International Law Association. She recently retired as Principle Human Rights Specialist in the Executive Secretariat of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (I-ACHR) as retirement is obligatory at the OAS upon turning 65. She is a very experienced international civil servant, widely known in the international human rights community. Her main interests are international human rights law, public international law, international organisations, and Latin American affairs.

Visiting Fellow

Ralph Crawshaw has been attached to the Human Rights Centre since he took the LLM in International Human Rights Law in 1990. Before then, he served as a police official in Essex Police, completing his service in the rank of Chief Superintendent. The focus of his work in human rights has mainly been teaching on human rights programmes for police, and writing. He has worked as a consultant with different international organisations, including the United Nations Human Rights Centre (Geneva), UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch (Vienna), ICRC, and the Council of Europe.

Visiting Fellow

Sam Dubberley is the manager of the Digital Verification Corps in the Crisis Response Team at Amnesty International and research consultant for the Human Rights and Big Data Project at the University of Essex. As a fellow of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, Sam co-authored a global study exploring the use of user-generated content in TV and online news output. He has published further research into the impact of UGC and vicarious trauma with Eyewitness Media Hub and First Draft. He serves on the advisory board of First Draft and the Syrian Archive, and is the co-editor, with Daragh Murray and Alexa Koenig, of the forthcoming book Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability.

Visiting Fellow

Tony Fisher is a partner in a local firm of solicitors, Fisher Jones and Greenwood, Colchester. This firm is perhaps the most dynamic in the region. Tony Fisher has a long-standing relationship with the Human Rights Centre. He has been working with Kevin Boyle and Francoise Hampson in connection with human rights litigation. The proposal to formally link him with the Centre is an effort to build on that relationship. His interest in international human rights work has led to the development of a civil rights department at his firm. He is also a member of the Law Society's International Human Rights Committee.

Visiting Fellow

Conor Foley has worked for a variety of organizations including UN DPKO, UNHCR, UN-Habitat and Amnesty International, in over twenty conflict and post-conflict zones. He has conducted an evaluation of the Government of Afghanistan’s National Judicial Reform Programme, ran a training programme for OSCE’s legal department in Bosnia-Herzegovina, trained the EU monitoring mission to Georgia, spent a year as a Protection Officer in Kosovo and set up and managed a legal aid program in Afghanistan. He was Team Leader for a Capitalization study of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights in Angola and carried out an EU capacity training needs assessment for the Malawian judiciary.

Visiting Fellow

Professor Liz Griffin is an academic and practitioner with a specialization in the theory and practice of human rights. Liz is Honorary Professor, University of Pretoria Centre for Human Rights. She held positions as Professor and Executive Director of the Human Rights Centre, O.P Jindal Global University, India (2012-2015) and at the UN mandated University for Peace (2006-2012) where she founded and directed its Human Rights Center. She has also taught at the University of Oxford University (2005-2012) and lectured at the University of Essex (2001-2006). Liz served as Deputy Director of the Essex Human Rights Center and Director of the BA in human rights (2004-2005).

Visiting Fellow

Michele LAMB, PhD, is a Principal Lecturer in Human Rights and Director of the Crucible Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Roehampton. Her research and publications focus on post-conflict reconciliation and human rights, civil society and non-governmental organizations, the sociology of human rights and human rights research methods. She is Director of a one million Euro EU funded International Tempus Project ‘Putting Human Rights at the Heart of Higher Education in the Western Balkans’, and a second Tempus project on Service Learning and Civic Engagement in Jordan and Lebanon. 

Visiting Fellow

Richard Lewis is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. From 1974 to 2003, he was an official at the European Commission holding, amongst other posts, the position of deputy head of the human rights unit and later acting head of the asylum and immigration unit. He has worked extensively with international organisations on human rights and refugee issues including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the International Organisation for Migration and the Council of the Baltic Sea States.

Visiting Fellow

Dr Rick Lines is Chair of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, which he co-founded in 2009. He is recognised internationally for his leading work in the areas of international drug control law, prisoners’ rights, harm reduction and the death penalty for drug offences, and regularly speaks and publishes on these and other topics.  His recent work focuses on the relationship between international drug control law and international human rights law, and on frameworks for treaty interpretation between these two legal regimes.

Visiting Fellow

Richard Maiman, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine (USA), where he taught a variety of undergraduate, graduate, and law school Modules in such areas as American constitutional law, American politics and public policy, human rights, and alternative dispute resolution. In 2000 he offered a course on Civil Liberties and Human Rights in American Constitutional Law for the Human Rights L.L.M. in Public Law at the University of Essex and in 2006 he taught a course on "US Justice and the War on Terror". 

Visiting Fellow

Ian Martin is Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, having previously served as Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Post-Conflict Planning for Libya. He has worked for the United Nations in several other capacities, including as Head of the Headquarters Board of Inquiry into certain incidents in the Gaza Strip (2009) and Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Nepal (2006-09).

Visiting Fellow

Canon Nurser's doctorate in the history of ideas was on Lord Acton's 'History of Liberty' ('The Reign of Conscience', New York 1987). He was he founding-director of the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland group 'Christianity and the Future of Europe (CAFE)' 1989-97. As a Fellow of the Centre, he published 'For all peoples and all nations: Christian churches and human rights', WCC Geneva 2005, which is a historical study of the role played by the early ecumenical movement (1938-48) in establishing human rights as the 'soul' of the new United Nations organisation.

Visiting Fellow

Dr Dimitrina Petrova is the founding Executive Director of The Equal Rights Trust, an international human rights organisation launched in January 2007 to promote equality as a fundamental human right. Previously she headed the European Roma Rights Centre, an international human rights organisation based in Budapest, of which she was the founding Executive Director since 1996 and which has been the recipient of a number of awards for pioneering work on racial equality. Since 1997, she has also been Visiting Professor at the Central European University's Legal Studies department, and is currently a Fellow at the University of Essex. She was the Director of The Human Rights Project in Sofia, Bulgaria (1992-96), and Chair-holder in international relations and peace at the University of Oregon (1995).

Visiting Fellow

Robert Priseman is a highly acclaimed artist with many international solo exhibitions from New York to London. Works by the artist are held in numerous public art collections including The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, The Mead Art Museum. Mass., The Royal Collection, London, the University of Hull Art Collection, Hertford Museum and The Northern Ireland Collection to name but a few. An interview with Robert by the renowned art historian and curator Michael Peppiatt appears in a new book published by Yale University Press 'Interviews with Artists, 1966 - 2011' (comprising some 45 interviews with artists such as Dubuffett, Sonia Delaunay, Henry Moore, Balthus, Bacon, Brassai, Oldenburg and Cartier-Bresson). Robert Priseman's work is themed, often focusing on issues concerning human rights such as his projects 'No Human Way to Kill' and 'Nazi Gas Chambers: From Memory to History'.

Visiting Fellow

Aisling Reidy, who was the first University of Essex Foundation Alumnus of the Year in 2002, is currently a Senior Legal Advisor at Human Rights Watch in New York. From October 2002 to December 2005 she was Director of the Irish Council on Civil Liberties. She is a barrister and was called to the Irish Bar in July 1996. She has many years experience working on Kurdish cases and has appeared before the European Commission and the Court of Human Rights as co-counsel.

Visiting Fellow

Tony Southern is a senior UK police detective with 32 years police experience. After retiring from the police Tony led a team of local officers in a counter-terrorism investigation in the Republic of Kurdistan (Iraq), which was later credited with significantly improving the safety of air travel to the region. Tony graduated from the 2010/11 LLM IHRL at Essex and, after graduation, worked as a Human Rights Officer for the OSCE in Kosovo and later as an OSCE serious crime advisor to the State Police and Ministry of Interior in Albania.

Visiting Fellow

Keir Starmer is the Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, and has been an MP continuously since 7 May 2015. He currently undertakes the role of Leader of the Labour Party. In addition to this he is also Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition. Starmer was educated at Reigate Grammar School, University of Leeds and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1987, became a Queen's Counsel in 2002, and was joint head of his chambers, Doughty Street Chambers. Acting in several appeals to the Privy Council for defendants who had been sentenced to death in Caribbean countries, his legal submissions led to the abolition of the mandatory death penalty in those countries. He has recently worked with lawyers in African countries towards the same end. In 2005 he persuaded the House of Lords that evidence obtained by torture should be inadmissible in court.

Visiting Fellow

Stuart Weir is the Associate Director of Democratic Audit, having been Director from 1991-2009. and a Visiting Professor with the Government Department at the University. Democratic Audit was until recently a research unit of the Centre and is now an independent research organisation under a board on which Essex academics play a significant role. The Audit conducts research into the quality of democracy and human rights in the UK and internationally.

Visiting Fellow

Judith Achenbach is a physician by training, with experience of working in a psychiatric clinic and as a personal assistant to persons with disabilities. She has been involved in various projects on health determinants and supporting equal access to care. Currently, Judith is holding a Mercator Fellowship on International Affairs, a project jointly run by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Stiftung Mercator, in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office. She works on operationalising human rights-based approaches to mental health and well-being. At the Centre, she studies the insights of harm reduction and how to apply this mindset to the area of human rights-based approaches to mental health. She is also assisting in establishing a research consortium and supporting the handover of the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.