Meghna Abraham is the head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Team at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. She is a lawyer and has previously worked at the World Organisation Against Torture, Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, International Service for Human Rights and as a consultant with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Worldvision. She has also undertaken research at the National Law School of India University and at the Human Right Centre, Essex University where she taught international child law. She has authored publications on the UN human rights system, the role of human rights NGOs and on enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights.
Douglass Cassel is professor of law and presidential fellow at Notre Dame Law School, Indiana, USA, where he directs the Center for Civil and Human Rights and the LL.M Program in International Human Rights. He teaches courses on international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law. Previously he held similar positions at Northwestern University School of Law and DePaul College of Law in Chicago. Professor Cassel lectures worldwide, and writes on human rights in scholarly publications and commentaries in the public media. He litigates human rights cases before domestic and international bodies. Among other positions, he has been legal advisor to the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, and president of the Justice Studies Center of the Americas, to which he was elected by the Organization of American States. He continues as president of the due process of Law Foundation, which promotes law reform in Latin America, and as an advisor on human rights to the American Bar Association.
Erika de Wet holds an LL.M. from Harvard University and completed her Habilitationsschrift, at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). This work was published with Hart Publishing (United Kingdom) in 2004 under the title The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council. It has since been widely cited, including by the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and United Kingdom Supreme Court. Erika de Wet is one of the Editors in Chief of the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC) Online; as well as one of the General Editors of the Oxford Constitutions Online.
Elizabeth Griffin is an academic and consultant with a specialization in the theory and practice of human rights and humanitarian law. She is a fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex and an adjunct professor at The George Washington University Law School. Ms. Griffin 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. She currently serves as consultant to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Consultant Policy Adviser, Amnesty International. Ms. Griffin is also the former deputy director, Essex University Human Rights Centre and former director, Human Rights Centre, UN mandated University for Peace.
Françoise Hampson: to be confirmed
Susan Karamanian is associate dean for International and Comparative Legal Studies at The George Washington University School of Law. Before joining GW Law in 2000, she spent 14 years in private practice in Dallas, Texas where she represented domestic and foreign clients in litigation matters. She also maintained an active pro bono practice on behalf of death-row inmates in Texas. She has held leadership positions in the American Society of International Law, including having been Vice-President. She is on the board of the Center for American and International Law, the Texas Appleseed Foundation, the Washington Foreign Law Society and the Friends of the Law Library of Congress. She is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. In 2007, she was Director of Studies, Public International Law (English-speaking) at the Hague Academy of International Law. She is a graduate of Auburn University (B.S), Oxford University (B.A.), where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Texas (J.D.).
Dino Kritsiotis is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham, where he has taught since October 1994. Professor Kritsiotis completed his law studies at the University of Wales College of Cardiff, and at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his LL.M. in international law with distinction in June 1992. He also holds a Diploma of International Humanitarian Law, also awarded with distinction, by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1993. His teaching and research interests concern international law and the use of force, international humanitarian law, general international law, as we as the history and theory of international law. He is widely published in these fields. Professor Kritsiotis is a regular member of the visiting faculty at the University of Michigan Law School, where he has held the L. Bates Lea Visiting Professorship in Law (2005-2008), and he has taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and at the University of Cape Town. He sits on the editorial boards for the Journal of Conflict and Security Law (Oxford University Press), the Human Rights Law Review (Oxford University Press), Human Rights & Human Welfare (www.hrhw.org) and the African Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (Juta Publishing).
Michael Matheson has taught at George Washington University Law School since 2002, and has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Goettingen and the Hague Academy. He has published a number of books and articles. He was a member of the UN International Law Commission, and has argued many cases before international tribunals, including the International Court of Justice. He served for more than 28 years as an attorney at the U.S. Department of State, including as Acting Legal Adviser of the Department. He is a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Advisory Committee on Public International Law of the U.S. State Department.
Dianne Otto is a Professor at Melbourne Law School. Her research engages critically with issues of gender and sexuality in the context of human rights law, international peace and security, law and development and human rights NGOs. She is particularly interested in legal representations of ‘difference’ and the law’s potential to support emancipatory change. Dianne has recently edited a three-volume collection, Gender Issues and Human Rights (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming 2012) and contributed a chapter ‘Feminist Approaches to International Law’ to Oxford Bibliographies Online: International Law, edited by Tony Carty (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011). She has been active in a number of human rights NGOs including Amnesty International, Women’s Rights Action Network Australia, Women’s Economic Equality Project (Canada) and International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (Malaysia).
Chip Pitts is lecturer in law at Stanford Law School and professorial fellow, SMU Law Institute of the Americas. Previously he has been a professor at Southern Methodist University Law School, partner at Baker & McKenzie, chief legal officer of Nokia, Inc., and an investor and founding executive of startup businesses in Austin and Silicon Valley. Former chair of Amnesty International USA and current president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, he is a frequent delegate to UN human rights bodies and advises the UN Global Compact and other global business & human rights initiatives. Recent publications include Harvard/BLIHR Human Rights Guide to Corporate Accountability (2008) and Corporate Social Responsibility: A Legal Analysis (2009).