Please note: This page reflects the faculty for the 2009 summer program. Faculty information for the 2010 session will be provided at a later date.
Kelly Askin (BS, JD, PhD) is Senior Legal Officer in the Open Society Justice Initiative, a post she has held since 2004. Dr. Askin has also served as a legal officer to the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 2000-2002 and has also served as an expert consultant, legal advisor, and international law trainer to prosecutors, judges, and the registry at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor, the International Criminal Court, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. She has lectured in over 65 countries and has published dozens of articles and book chapters on various aspects of international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and gender justice. Her books include War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals (1997) and the three volume treatise Women and International Human Rights Law (1999, 2001, 2002, co-editor). She serves on the board of several organizations, including the Executive Board of the American Branch of the International Law Association, the International Judicial Academy, International Criminal Law Services, the International Law Student's Association, and the International Journal of Criminal Law.

Geoff Gilbert (LLB, University of Leicester; LLM, SJD, University of Virginia) is Professor of Law at the University of Essex. He is a former Head of the Department of Law and former Director of the LL.M. in International Human Rights Law. He was part of the University of Essex Human Rights Centre research program on human rights in situations of acute crisis that was carried out on behalf of the Department for International Development (DfID). He has carried out human rights training on behalf of the Council of Europe and UNHCR in the Russian Federation (Siberia, the Urals and Kalmykskaya), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia & Montenegro and Kosovo. He is an expert consultant on refugees and terrorism for UNHCR. He is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law. His specialism’s are international human rights law, the protection of refugees in international law, and international criminal law.

Elizabeth Griffin (BA London; LLM Essex) is Director of the Human Rights Centre and Adjunct Associate Professor at the UN University for Peace. She has extensive experience as a human rights practitioner investigating and reporting on human rights violations. She has worked for the United Nations (initially at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and then with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) and as a Researcher for Amnesty International in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Prior to joining the UN University for Peace, Elizabeth lectured in international human rights law at the University of Essex, UK. Elizabeth is currently engaged in teaching and research in the field of international human rights and humanitarian law and the law governing peace support operations.

Jenny Martinez (BA Yale University; JD Harvard Law School). Jenny Martinez’s scholarship makes the first major attempt to analyze the ramifications of the increasing number of international tribunals operating in a globalized environment, but without any supervening sovereign authority to which they are all bound. An experienced litigator, she argued the 2004 case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to clarify the constitutional protections available to post-9/11 “enemy combatants” who are U.S. citizens. Professor Martinez has also served as a consultant for both Human Rights First and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, she was a senior research fellow at Yale University and an attorney at Jenner & Block. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was an associate legal officer for Judge Patricia Wald of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.


Joe Oloka-Onyango (LLB, Makerere University; LLM, SJD, Harvard). Prof. J. Oloka-Onyango is the Director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) and former Dean of Law at Makerere University in Uganda. He has been Visiting Professor at a number of universities around the world, particularly in Africa and the United States, and is involved with several international human rights organizations. He was a member and Special Rapporteur on Globalization and Human Rights of the United Nations (UN) Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and is a Trustee of the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. His areas of teaching interest and research include International Human Rights Law, Refugee Law, Gender and the Law and Constitutional Law and History, and he has written extensively on these and other topical subjects.

David Petrasek (BA, University of Waterloo; LLB Osgoode Hall, York University; LLM, London School of Economics). Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, Amnesty International. He has worked extensively on human rights, humanitarian and conflict resolution issues, including from 1990-96 with Amnesty International, from 1997-98 with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1998-2002 at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, where he helped to found and direct the research program, and from 2003-2007 as Director of Policy at the HD Centre, a private, Swiss foundation engaged in conflict mediation. He has taught international human rights and humanitarian law courses in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and has worked as a consultant or adviser to several NGOs and UN agencies. In 2009 he published with co-author Irene Khan, The Unheard Truth: Human rights and poverty.

Patricia Viseur Sellers (BA, Rutgers; JD, Pennsylvania). Special Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. From 1994-2007, Professor Sellers was the Legal Advisor for Gender Related Crimes and Senior Acting Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In that capacity, she advised teams of investigators and trial attorneys on the prosecution of sex-based crimes under the tribunals' Statutes and pertinent doctrines of humanitarian law. Prior to her work as an international prosecutor, Professor Sellers served at the Directorate General for External Relations at the European Commission, the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, and the Philadelphia Defender Association. She is a former co-chair of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers.

Ralph G. Steinhardt (AB, Bowdoin; JD Harvard), Co-Director of the Program, Arthur Selwyn Miller Research Professor of Law and International Relations, George Washington University Law School, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Yale Law School. For twenty-five years, Professor Steinhardt has been active in the domestic litigation of international human rights norms, having represented various human rights organizations and individual human rights victims, before all levels of the federal judiciary, including the US Supreme Court. He is the founding Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Justice and Accountability, an anti-impunity organization specializing in human rights litigation. He has also served as an expert witness in cases testing the civil liability of multinational corporations for their complicity in human rights violations. Professor Steinhardt is the author of numerous books and articles, including most recently "Corporate Responsibility and the International Law of Human Rights: The New Lex Mercatoria" (2005); "The Role of Domestic Courts in Enforcing International Human Rights Law" (2004); and International Civil Litigation (2002).