HRC Speaker Series: Niamh Eastwood

Niamh Eastwood is Executive Director of Release. She is a non-practising barrister who started at Release in 2002 as a legal advisor. She has extensive experience of service delivery, policy strategy, fundraising and operational development. Having worked in drug policy for the last ten years Niamh is passionate about drug policy reform and believes that the most vulnerable in society are disproportionately impacted upon by the current drug laws.

Niamh has co-authored Release's two most recent policy papers 'The Numbers in Black And White: Ethnic Disparities In The Policing And Prosecution Of Drug Offences In England And Wales' and ‘A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe’. She has also co-authored and edited a number of Release's advice booklets including ‘Drugs and the Law’ and ‘Sex Workers and the Law’, she regularly contributes to drug policy journals and publications including Drugs and Alcohol Today (of which she is also a member of the editorial board) and Drink and Drug News. Niamh is also responsible for drafting many of Release's briefings for parliamentarians and policy makers. She has presented at international and national conferences and is regularly invited to comment in the media.

Niamh is also an Associate of The London School of Economics IDEAS International Drug Policy Project, a member of the Expert Steering Group for the Global Drug Survey and is a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University.

Julie Hannah is the Co-Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy. Ms. Hannah has a wide range of experience in directing programmes and supporting projects in both humanitarian and human rights environments. Her research focuses on drug control and international UN human rights institutions, drug control and the right to health, and the use of force in drug control enforcement activities.

She is a member of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. For the past 10 years, she supported and directed a range of humanitarian projects in Southeast Asia and the United States. From 2012 to 2013 she coordinated research projects examining counterterrorism policies for the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Essex.
She has a degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia and completed her LLM in human rights and humanitarian law with distinction at the University of Essex.