András Kováts
András Kováts is the Director of Menedék Hungarian Association for Migrants. His research is focused on immigration and asylum policies, immigrant integration, and welfare policy. He is the author or editor of eight books in addition to over 40 book chapters and journal articles. He has taught international migration and immigrant integration at several higher education institutions and lead many training courses. He holds a BA in Special Education from Bárczy Teacher Training College Budapest and an MA in Social Policy from ELTE Institute of Sociology and Social Policy.
Anna Krasteva
Dr. Anna Krasteva is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. She is also founder and director of CERMES Center for European Refugees Migration and Ethnic Studies. She is responsible for authoring and editing 29 books and she has published articles in fifteen countries. Her primary research interests include migration and ethnic politics and policies, populism and the radical right, new mobilisations online and offline, e-citizenship, and digital democracy. She conducted her undergraduate studies in French and Spanish Languages at Sofia University. She later received an M.A. in Philosophy from Sofia University and a PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Barbora Černušáková
Barbora Černušáková is the Amnesty International’s expert on East-Central European countries and a human rights researcher. Her main focus is the discrimination and hate crimes against Roma and the abuse of rights of refugees and migrants. She has authored a number of reports covering human rights violations in the region such as her 2010 report, Violent attacks against Roma in Hungary: Time to investigate racial motivation, and co-authored submissions to the European Parliament and to numerous Council of Europe institutions. Barbora Cernusakova is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester in Sociology and writing her thesis on the ‘collective action of Roma in the Czech Republic’.
Brendan O’Leary
Prof Brendan O’Leary is a Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has authored, co-authored and co-edited 22 books; and authored or co-authored over 120 articles or chapters in peer-reviewed journals and university presses, and he has engaged with myriad other forms of publication. O’Leary has served as a political and constitutional advisor to the United Nations, the European Union, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the Governments of the UK and Ireland, and to the British Labour Party during the Irish peace process. He is the recipient of many academic honors among them are the 2010 Harrison Prize for best paper published in Political Studies (received for a paper he co-authored with Dr Paul Mitchell and Professor Geoffrey Evans), the inaugural Juan Linz Prize of the International Political Science Association, and most recently he and his regular co-author Professor John McGarry jointly received the ENMISA Distinguished Scholar Award of the International Studies Association. His research interests include but are not limited to power-sharing systems, nationalism, violence in divided societies, democracy, despotisms, populism, and the crises of the European Union. He has a BA Honours from the University of Oxford in Philosophy, Politics and Economics as well as a PhD in Political Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His PhD thesis received the Robert McKenzie Memorial Prize for the best PhD at LSE presented in 1988.
Daniele Albertazzi
Dr Daniele Albertazzi is Senior Lecturer in European Politics and Postgraduate Research Director in the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) of the University of Birmingham. He has written widely on European politics and the populist right in Europe for a variety of international academic journals, such as West European Politics, Party Politics, Government and Opposition, Politics, Contemporary Italian Politics and others. He is the co-editor of Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy (with D. McDonnell; Palgrave, 2008) and Resisting the Tide: Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001–06) (with C. Brook, C. Ross, and N. Rothenberg; Continuum, 2009). His monograph Populists in Power, co-written with Duncan McDonnell, was published by Routledge in February 2015. Daniele is also the co-convenor of the Political Studies Association’s Italian Politics Specialist Group.
Edin Hodźić
Dr Edin Hodžić currently acts as Director and Head of the Public Law Program at Center for Social Research Analitika, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University. His primary research interests include international law, international human rights law, and constitutional law, with a particular focus on theory and practice of collective and minority rights, legal aspects of democratic transitions and transitional justice in general. In the past, he was an editor and the Editor-in-Chief of the “Pulse of Democracy”, a bi-monthly online magazine. He has also worked as a researcher and analyst at the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has acted as a consultant for a number of national and international organisations, in addition to leading or participating in various research projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region, and publishing a number of articles, books and reports on topics pertaining to his expertise. Hodžić holds a doctoral degree in international and comparative law from the Institute of Comparative Law, Faculty of Law at McGill University. Hodžić has also obtained a Master’s Degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford, and graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Sarajevo.
Fernand de Varennes
Dr Fernand de Varennes is the newly elected UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Université de Moncton. He is a leading expert on human rights of minorities with a focus on linguistic rights. Throughout his career, he has played an outstanding role in promoting Asian scholars in the field of human rights as Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal in Human Rights and the Law between 1998 and 2002. Dr de Varennes is the author of many critically acclaimed articles focusing on the prevention of ethnic conflicts and the relationship between democracy, human rights and minorities. In addition, he authored several UN and UNESCO papers on the rights of minorities and migrants, including on political participation, the prevention of violent conflict, and language. Over the years, he has also been the keynote speaker at hundreds of international conferences and has some 200 publications on human and minority rights in 30 languages. For his dedication and work on protecting the rights of minorities, he was awarded the 2004 Linguapax Prize and the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
Fiona McConnell
Dr Fiona McConnell is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Previously, she was a lecturer in human geography at Newcastle University. She is a political geographer who researches issues of sovereignty, state practices and the (re)pluralizing of political space. Her specific interest lies in how communities officially excluded from formal state politics are still able to engage with aspects of statecraft. Her doctoral research was centred on the sovereign practices of the exile Tibetan government based in India. McConnell holds a BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London.
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Dr. Gaetano Pentassuglia, Juris Dr, PhD, is a Reader (equivalent to US full professor) in International Law and Human Rights at Liverpool University. He has published widely in the field, especially on human rights issues relating to minority groups, including indigenous peoples, and broader aspects of public international law (particularly customary international law-making). He has taught as a visiting professor at several universities such as Munich, Lund, Toronto, Palermo, Milano-Bicocca, and the European University Institute in Florence, and was recently a Visiting Professor at the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain). Professor Pentassuglia’s latest books include Minorities in International Law (2002), Minority Groups and Judicial Discourse in International Law: A Comparative Perspective (2009) and Ethno-Cultural Diversity and Human Rights: Challenges and Critiques (forthcoming, 2018). He has acted as consultant to a number of international and nongovernmental institutions and is a former member of the International Law Association Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Professor Pentassuglia is also a frequent contributor to online magazines and discussion forums.
Hilly Moodrick-Even Khen
Dr Moodrick-Even Khen is a Professor of public international law at Sha’arei Mishpat Law School in Israel. Her research and teaching are focused on international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and philosophical-juridical interdisciplinary scholarship. She has authored several publications on such topics. She is currently a member of the ILA and a board member of the Israeli Law and Society Association. She has acquired an LL.D from The Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an M.A., (magna cum laude) from The Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University, and an LL.B from The Faculty of Law at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya.
Jennifer Jackson-Preece
Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece is Associate Professor in Nationalism in Europe at the London School of Economics. She is the author of two books on minority rights: National Minorities and the European Nation-State System (OUP, 1998) and Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community (Polity, 2005) as well as numerous articles and edited book contributions. In addition to her academic research, Dr Jackson-Preece acts as a consultant for various international and non-governmental organisations in the area of human and minority rights protection, and ethnic conflict regulation.
Joelle Grogan
Dr Joelle Grogan is a Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University. Her primary research focuses are UK and European Union law, she is currently focused on Brexit and the Rule of Law. She has had the opportunity to share her work across Europe, the United States, and China. She holds an undergraduate degree in Law from Trinity College Dublin. She obtained a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from Oxford before successfully conducting doctoral research, also at Oxford University, on the rule of law in the European Union.
Joshua Castellino
Prof. Joshua Castellino is Professor of Law & Dean of the School of Law at Middlesex University London, and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, Galway, Ireland. He is the founder of the Annual Summer School on Minorities, first held in June 2001 in Galway, Ireland. Joshua has held visiting positions in Ireland, Spain, Hungary and Italy. He worked as a journalist in Mumbai, India, with the Indian Express Group, was awarded a Chevening Scholarship to pursue an MA in International Law & Politics in 1995 and completed his PhD in International Law in 1998. Joshua has authored seven books on international law and human rights law, on self-determination, title to territory and indigenous peoples rights, besides over fifty academic articles on a range of these and other legal sub-topics. He has completed the third, in a five-book series published by Oxford University Press, on issues concerning Global Minority Rights Law, the latest entitled Minority Rights in the Middle East: A Comparative Legal Analysis (with Kathleen Cavanaugh). Joshua was part of the EU-China Experts & Diplomatic Dialogue and Lawyers for the New Millennium: Support for the Arab Law Union. He regularly engages with multilateral organisations, Law Societies, the judiciary and NGOs in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, on issues of human rights advocacy and public international law. He sits on the Leadership Council of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN) convened by Jeffrey Sachs under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, where he co-chairs the working group entitled Gender, Social Exclusion and Vulnerable Groups.
Mirjana Tomić
Mirjana Tomić (Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1955), journalist and communication consultant, works as a project manager at Forum Journalismus und Medien Wien (fjum), leading organisation in Austria that specialises in lifelong learning for journalists. Tomić develops seminars on international affairs. Further, she trains Austrian and international diplomats at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, as well as journalists at ORF, Austrian public broadcaster, in understanding the current challenges of international news coverage. Mirjana’s professional experience encompasses journalism-both as an international correspondent and as a war reporter in the Balkans and in Mexico – for the leading Spanish newspaper El País, and other European media; media relations and public outreach for the Vienna-based United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), political analysis for think-tanks and NGOs in Italy, Spain and Austria; as well as university lecturing in Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany and Mexico.
Tomić obtained a BA degree in Political Science from Brandeis University, Massachusetts, USA, a graduate diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University, SAIS, Bologna, Italy, and an MA in Political Science from El Colegio de México in Mexico City, Mexico. She is fluent in six languages and has lived in seven countries. Presently Mirjana Tomić lives in Vienna, Austria.
Rys Farthing
Dr Rys Farthing is a Social Policy Analyst who specialises in participatory policy development with marginalised and low-income children and young people. She has worked at a range of universities and NGOs in the UK and Australia, as well as alongside politicians. She holds a DPhil in social policy.
Tamás Kiss
Dr Tamás Kiss is a Researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj Romania. He obtained an MA (2000) in sociology at Babeș-Bolyai University and a PhD (2010) in cultural studies at the University of Pécs (Dissertation title: The Administrative Gaze. Towards a Comparative Analysis of the Hungarian Demographic Discourses in Romania. On the Statistical Construction of the Transylvanian Hungarian Population). His main research interests are: ethnic demography (processes of census ethnic categorization, demographic and migratory behavior), demographic discourses and ethnic politics. He is the author of a number of books in Romanian and Hungarian and of numerous articles in Hungarian, Romanian and English. Recent publications include “Beyond the ethnic vote. Shifting determinants of the electoral behavior of the Transylvanian Hungarians” (forthcoming in Problems of Post-Communism); Escaping the “Balkanizing” gaze? Perceptions of global and internal developmental hierarchies in Romania (forthcoming in Eastern European Politics and Society); ; “The perception of global hierarchies: South-Eastern European patterns in comparative perspectives” Chinese Journal of Sociology Vol. 2., No. 4 (2016): 497-523 (with Attila Melegh, Sabina Csanoova, Linda Young-DeMarco, Arland Thornton); “Shifting linkages in ethnic mobilization: the case of RMDSZ and the Hungarians in Transylvania”, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 44., No. 4 (2016): 591-610 (with István Gergő Székely); “Depopulating Semi- periphery? Longer Term Dynamics of Migration and Socioeconomic Development in Romania” Demográfia Vol. 58, No. 5. English Edition (2015), 91-132 (with István Horváth).
Tommaso Nodari
Tommaso Nodari is the Programme Director of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), an international, nonviolent, and democratic membership organisation that advocates for the rights of indigenous people and minorities. Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments, and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts which affect them. Tommaso Nodari holds an LLM in International Law from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Law from Bocconi University.