People

Dr Ronit Matar Matar

Assistant Lecturer.
Essex Law School
 Dr Ronit Matar Matar

Profile

Biography

Ronit is a University of Essex Doctoral Scholarship funded PhD candidate at the School of Law. Her doctoral work questions whether the right to privacy and private life can offer adequate and effective protection to all human legal subjects and how can a framework of individual self-determination provide a potential remedy. Since joining the School of Law, Ronit has been teaching LLB Jurisprudence (LW301), where she combines her enthusiasm and expertise in legal theory with her passion for teaching. In addition, Ronit worked for the University of Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic in a joint project with UNAIDS on the role of UN entities as amicus curiae in strategic litigation. Prior to starting her PhD, Ronit worked with various human rights actors where she mainly researched and drafted legal documents, reports, training materials and advocacy papers. In 2018 Ronit worked with the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights where she wrote articles on Italian citizenship law and Roma and Sinti discrimination. In 2017, as part of a team at the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex she drafted an amicus curaie for the Constitutional Court of Chile in support of the decriminalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy. In 2016/2017 she worked on a comparative report for Open Society Justice Initiative on national commissions of inquiry. In particular, Ronit focused on the French parliamentary commission of inquiry at the aftermath of the death of Rémi Fraise and the Czech Republics ombudsman report on forced sterilization of Roma women. Lastly, Ronit briefly worked for UNHCR Regional Office for Western Africa. At the Protection Unit, Ronit prepared training materials on the UNHCR mandate and refugee protection and was part of the mixed migration working group. Aside from her interest in law, Ronit has many years' experience facilitating dialogue workshops at the School of Peace Foundation of Monte Sole, Italy, where she led workshops focused on the deconstruction of institutional and individual narratives around armed conflicts. Selected publications and presentations: - 'Pretty v UK and the Right to Individual Self-Determination: Personhood, Harm and (Missed) Opportunities for Change, Cambridge-Essex-LSE Human Rights Doctoral Triangle Conference, Centre of Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge, 30 April 2021. - Neutrality, Objectivity and the Structural Violence of Non-Recognition of Subjectivity, The Sexual Politics of Freedom Conference at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law at the National University of Ireland -Galway, 18 September 2020.

Qualifications

  • LLM International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law University of Essex (2018)

  • MA Human Rights and Conflict Management Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (2016)

  • BA Anthropological Sciences University of Bologna (2014)

Research and professional activities

Thesis

The Right to Individual Self-Determination: A New Framework for Human Litigation and Theory

Supervisor: Dr Carla Ferstman , Dr Emily Jones

Research interests

International Human Rights Law

Legal Personality

Contact

ronit.matar@essex.ac.uk

Location:

Colchester Campus