Anna-Mária Bíró, Tom Lantos Institute
Anna-Mária Bíró is the director of the Tom Lantos Institute, a research and education institution in the human rights of minorities. She holds an M.Sc. in Public Administration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and a PhD in political sciences from the Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Budapest, Hungary. She was an advisor on international relations to the President of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania and head of the Europe Office of Minority Rights Group International (MRG). She worked as the Advisor on Minority Affairs of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Prior to working at the Tom Lantos Institute, Anna-Mária Bíró was a senior consultant to the Managing Multiethnic Communities Programme, LGI/Open Society Foundations and director of the higher education, innovation course “Incorporating Ethno-cultural Diversity into the Teaching of Public Administration” at the Central European University in Budapest. While TLI director, Anna-Mária edited Populism, Memory and Minority Rights: Central and Eastern European Issues in Global Perspective (Brill/Nijhoff, 2018), and co-edited The Noble Banner of Human Rights, Essays in Memory of Tom Lantos (Brill/Nijhoff, 2018) as well as Minority Rights and Liberal Democratic Insecurities, The Challenge of Unstable Orders (Routledge, 2022).
Balázs Vizi, National University of Public Service
Balázs Vizi dr. jur., is associate professor at the Department of International Law, Faculty of International and European Studies of the University of Public Service (Budapest). He is also research professor at the Institute for Minority Studies, Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest). He graduated in law at the Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) and holds a PhD in social sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven). He has specialized in international human and minority rights law. Among others, Balázs Vizi is co-editor of Research Handbook on Minority Politics in the European Union (Edward Elgar, 2022) and of Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Corinne Lennox, Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Dr Corinne Lennox is Co-Director of the Human Rights Consortium. She is a Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and convenes the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights.
Her research focuses on issues of minority and indigenous rights protection, civil society mobilisation for human rights, and human rights and development. She has worked for many years as a human rights consultant and trainer, including at Minority Rights Group International, the UNDP and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Nicolas Levrat,
UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues
Pr. Nicolas Levrat is the fourth Special Rapporteur on minority issues. He was appointed by the Human Rights Council on 13 October 2023 and took up his functions as Special Rapporteur on 1 November 2023. Levrat is a French speaking Swiss, born in 1964. As such, he is a member of a linguistic minority in Switzerland and has been dedicating his academic research and teaching focus on Peoples and minorities rights, Federalism, and on relationships between legal systems. Holding a PhD in International Law, Prof. Levrat has been a full Professor of International and European Law at the University of Geneva since 2001. At the University of Geneva, he was appointed Director of the European studies in 2007, which he reshaped into the Global Studies Institute in 2013; he was the Director of the International Law Department from 2016 to 2019; and he also launched the Human Rights Week, which has been in place since 2012. He started his professional career as a European civil servant at the Council of Europe (1991- 1994), and then joined the Université libre de Bruxelles, first as a Researcher on minorities issues in Belgium and then as a Junior Professor. In 2022, he was elected 2nd Vice-President of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the protection of national minorities of the Council of Europe, position which he resigned when taking up his role as Special Rapporteur. Nicolas Levrat is the author of seven books, editor of another 20, and has published more than 150 scientific articles or book chapters and he has been advising numerous local, regional and national governments, as well as international organisations and NGOs for the past 30 years.
Fiona McConnell, University of Oxford
Fiona McConnell is Professor of Political Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. She joined Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment in 2013 and prior to this she was a lecturer in human geography at Newcastle University. Fiona has a BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge and PhD from Queen Mary, University of London. Working the fields of political, legal and historical geographies, Fiona’s research develops new areas of thinking regarding governance beyond the state, how political legitimacy is articulated by marginalised communities, and changing practices of diplomacy and mediation. Fiona was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography in 2019 and the Back Award from the Royal Geographical Society in 2022. She has published ‘Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile’ (2016), edited volumes on geographies of peace and on diplomatic cultures, and papers in, amongst others, International Political Sociology, Political Geography, Antipode, and International Theory. Fiona sits on the Board of Directors of the Tibet Justice Center and the Advisory Board of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.
Mercè Monje Cano, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
Mercè Monje Cano is a socio-cultural project manager and accomplished human rights advocate with over fifteen years of experience in advocacy, project management and strategic planning. Before her appointment as UNPO Secretary General, she had been serving as the Executive Director and Head of Programmes at the UNPO, where she also acted as the UN Representative. She has managed programmes, led numerous UN advocacy efforts, coordinate various human rights initiatives, and led trainings on advocacy techniques, showcasing her expertise in advancing the rights of minorities, indigenous peoples, and unrepresented groups.
Mohammad Shahabuddin, Birmingham Law School
Mohammad Shahabuddin is a Professor of International Law & Human Rights at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK. He specialises in histories and theories of international law and human rights, international law of minority protection, right to self-determination, and ethnicity, nationalism and ethnic conflicts. His teaching and research is informed by critical, postcolonial, and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholarship. He has published extensively in the areas of his research specialisation. Shahab is the author of Ethnicity and International Law: Histories, Politics and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial States in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021). For the latter, he received the prestigious Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2018-2020). He is also the editor of Bangladesh and International Law (Routledge, 2021). In addition to academic research, Shahab also worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Bangladesh as its National Consultant in 2011/12 to conduct compliance studies on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). These reports have been published by the National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh, and used for policy reform recommendations to the government.