Lecturer Biographies
Lídia Balogh
Lídia Balogh defended her PhD dissertation in 2016, at the Media Theory Program of ELTE University, Budapest. She holds three MAs: in Nationalism Studies, Communication Studies, Hungarian Language and Literature. She is a Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences. As a freelance researcher, she participated in projects of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights and the European Roma Rights Centre. She has been active in the Hungarian civil society in the field of human rights for over a decade. As an expert on minority women’s issues, she contributes to the advocacy activities of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby.
Anna-Mária Bíró
Anna-Mária Bíró is the Director of the Tom Lantos Institute, an international human and minority rights organization focusing on research and education based in Budapest, Hungary. In 2007-2011, Anna-Mária was a senior consultant to the Managing Multiethnic Communities Programme of LGI/Open Society Foundations and she was the director of the course “Incorporating Ethnocultural Diversity into the Teaching of Public Administration” organised by the Central European University. Prior to this, she directed the Europe Office of Minority Rights Group International (MRG) for eight years. She has also worked as the Advisor on Minority Affairs at the OSCE Mission in Kosovo and as an Advisor on International Relations to the President of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania. Anna-Mária 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. Among others, Anna-Mária is co-editor of Diversity in Action: Local Public Management of Multi-ethnic Communities in Central and Eastern Europe (LGI/OSI, 2001) and co-author of Minority Rights Advocacy in the European Union: A Guide for NGOs in South-East Europe (MRG, London, 2006). In 2011 she co-edited with Corinne Lennox volume 18(2) of the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights on civil society contributions to the international regime of minority protection. From 2018 she is Editor-in-Chief of the series International Studies in Human Rights and Identity published by Brill/Nijhoff Academic Publishers.
Joshua Castellino
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 in 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 organizations, 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.
Jennifer Castello
Jennifer joined the legal department of Minority Rights Group International in September 2017 as a Legal officer challenging slavery in Mauritania through strategic litigation, capacity building and international advocacy. She is a qualified French lawyer and has worked extensively on immigration and asylum law. Jennifer has been involved in international tribunals working for the international criminal court and the united assistance to the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia.
Cathal Doyle
Dr Cathal Doyle is LLM Programme Leader and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Law Middlesex University, London (UK). He is a founding member of the European Network on Indigenous Peoples, a member of the board of the Forest Peoples Programme and a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.Dr Doyle specialises in the rights of indigenous peoples under international and national law, and the interface with business and human rights and sustainable development. He has published six books, numerous book chapters, reports and articles on these topics, and his work has been cited by UN and OECD expert bodies in their reports and guidance to State and corporate actors in relation to indigenous peoples’ rights. His current research centres on the intersection of indigenous peoples and minorities rights with large scale development activities, in particular it addresses the activities of the extractive industry in the Americas and Asia and the evolving concept of free prior and informed consent and indigenous peoples’ right to self-determined sustainable development. This includes a focus on human rights impact assessments, access to remedy in the context of development projects and the implementation of reparation decisions. His research also extends to the individual rights of members of indigenous and minority communities, such as the rights of indigenous children with disabilities.Dr Doyle has worked as a consultant/advisor for successive UN Special Rapporteurs on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and a number of NGOs involved in supporting indigenous peoples. He also collaborates regularly with a range of human rights NGOs, indigenous peoples’ organizations and networks in Asia and Latin America, and academic institutions. This includes assisting indigenous peoples’ organizations and NGOs to develop related project proposals and seek funding from international development agencies and corporate actors, to implement research projects and deliver training, to engage with national and international grievance mechanisms and to pursue the implementation of decisions of international and regional mechanisms.Dr Doyle previously worked as a Management Consultant with Accenture, a global consulting company, managing projects addressing business process reengineering, information technology, knowledge management and exchange, operations management, service delivery and strategy for major clients in Europe, the US and Latin America. This work spanned financial, retail, manufacturing and government sectors, with clients including Airbus, national taxation authorities, Carrefour, KBC, Adecco, Daimler-Chrysler and the World Bank/IFC.
Alejandro Fuentes
Alejandro Fuentes is a Senior Researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He received his PhD (in International Law) and LL.M (in Comparative and European Legal Studies) from Trento University (It.), and Law degree from the University of Córdoba (Arg.).
He is a regular lecturer at the Master’s Programme in International Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law, Lund University, where he directs the course on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, teaches International Human Rights Law I and II, and supervises master theses.
His research focuses on international human rights law, in particular on international and regional systems of human rights protection, cultural diversity and identity, groups, minority and indigenous people rights, and human rights education. He has authored a book on Cultural diversity and indigenous peoples’ land claims: argumentative dynamics and jurisprudential approach in the Americas (Trento University, 2012).
He is a regular peer-reviewer of international scientific journals, including the Journal on Minority and Groups Rights and the Nordic Journal of International law, Brill Nijhoff, Leiden/Boston.
Alejandro Fuentes also has extensive experience in developing and implementing international programmes aimed to strengthen institutional capacities of judicial authorities and academic institutions in different regions in the world, especially in the field of human rights applied research and human rights education (HRE). He is currently closely collaborating with institutional partners in South-East Asia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Turkey, Belarus, and with different European academic institutions.
Dr. Fuentes started his career in the Judicial Power of the Province of Córdoba (Arg.), where he worked for seven years as a judge’s assistance.
Dolkun Isa
Dolkun Isa is a former student-leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1988. He founded the Students’ Science and Culture Union at the university in 1987 and worked on programs to eliminate illiteracy and to promote science and to lead other students in East Turkestan. He was then dismissed from university but completed his physics degree via independent study, and went on to receive a Master’s degree in Politics and Sociology from Gazi University in Turkey and a degree in Computer Science in Munich, Germany. After enduring persecution from the Chinese government, Isa fled China in 1994 and sought asylum in Europe, and became a citizen of Germany in 2006.
In November 1996, he played an important role in establishing the World Uyghur Youth Congress in Germany and served as Executive Chairman and President. In April 2004, he also played an important role in the establishment of the World Uyghur Congress through the merger of the East Turkestan National Congress and the World Uyghur Youth Congress and was elected General Secretary. He has since been presenting Uyghur human rights issues to the UN Human Rights Council, European Parliament, European governments and international human rights organizations. Dolkun Isa is the current President of the World Uyghur Congress.
Isa was also the leader of the students demonstration on 15 June 1988 and was expelled from the university in September, 1988 after four months of house arrest and a six hour-long dialogue with government officials about the students’ demands. Following this, he operated a small business and travelled to various cities in China and East Turkestan to collect information about the Chinese government’s Uyghur policy between 1988 and 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he learnt English and Turkish at Beijing Foreign Language University, and engaged in copying and distributing relevant Uyghur history books to the Uyghur community. In 1994, he was forced to leave China and fled to Turkey, where he received his Master’s Degree in Political Science from Gazi University in Ankara. He then founded the Eastern Turkestan Youth Union and served as the Chairman during his time in in the country.
Dolkun Isa has consistently advocated for the rights of the Uyghur people and has raised the issue in the United Nations, the institutions of the European Union and in individual states. He has worked to mobilize the Uyghur diaspora community to collectively advocate for their rights and the rights of the Uyghur population in the Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. He was recognised for his efforts in raising awareness of the human rights situation facing the Uyghur people and for calling for greater democracy and freedom in China by receiving the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s Human Rights Award on 30 March 2016. In 2017, he was elected as the Vice-President of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), of which the World Uyghur Congress is a member. In this capacity, he works with other marginalised or unrepresented peoples to collectively strive for democracy, freedom and respect for basic human rights.
Hassan Jabareen
Hassan is the founder of Adalah. He has served as Adalah’s General and Legal Director since its establishment in 1996. He has 25 years of experience in litigating scores of landmark constitutional law cases before the Israeli Supreme Court on issues of discrimination, political rights, land rights, and economic and social rights on behalf of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as humanitarian cases involving the protection of Palestinian civilians living under occupation in the OPT. He is an Adjunct Lecturer for a course that he initiated on the legal status of the Arab minority in Israel in the Faculties of Law at Tel Aviv, Hebrew, and Haifa Universities since 1998. He has received several awards for outstanding public interest lawyering and top human rights law prizes. He has also published several academic articles in edited books and law reviews on the citizenship status of the Palestinians. Hassan was a Yale World Fellow in 2005-2006 and a Senior Robina Law Fellow at Yale Law School in 2012-2014; and a research fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2015-2016.
Jelena Jovanovic
Jelena is currently working as Policy and Research Coordinator for the European Roma Grassroots Organizations (ERGO) Network. In ERGO, she is leading its work on combating antigypsyism and cooperating with ERGO member organisations regarding their fact-finding activities. The focus of her work is implementation of the current EU Roma Framework and the post 2020 Roma targeted policies. She obtained a Master degree in Serbian Language and Literature at the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) and a double diploma from a Gender Studies master program of Central European University (Hungary) and University of Hull (UK). Her latest publication is a co-edited volume “Romani Women’s Movement: Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe”. Jelena is also a Research Affiliate of the Center for Policy Studies at Central European University.sity.
Daniel Kobei
Daniel Kobei is the Founder and Executive Director of Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP), a Kenyan-based NGO working to secure human and land rights of the indigenous Ogiek community and other Indigenous Peoples (IPs) across Kenya and Africa. He represents IPs under the umbrella of the International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity (IIFB) under the Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife Management (CPW) set by Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). He is also an IPs human rights defender and has led numerous high-level discussions on IPs in various forums across the world. He led the Ogiek to winning an eight-year legal battle over land and human rights abuses at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights based in Arusha, Tanzania on May 26, 2017. He has been promoting the restoration of the Mau Forest Complex through Ogiek community involvement as a forest dwelling, hunter-gatherer community.
Manjula Pradeep
Manjula Pradeep is an Indian human rights activist and a lawyer. She is the former Executive Director of Navsarjan Trust, one of the largest Dalit rights organizations in India, addressing the issues of caste discrimination and gender-based discrimination. She currently works as a freelancer and is the founder of WAYVE Foundation focusing on the rights of marginalised youths in India. Apart from that, Manjula is involved with the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. She served as Co-chair of the executive group of the International Dalit Solidarity Network and the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the National Center for Advocacy Studies, India. She also represents issues facing Dalits and Dalit women in international forums, such as the United Nations and the European Union.
Roberta Medda-Windischer
Dr. Roberta Medda-Windischer (LL.M, PhD), Senior Researcher and Group Leader for National Minorities, Migration and Cultural Diversity at the Eurac Research Institute for Minority Rights (Bolzano/Bozen – Italy), is an international lawyer specialised in migration issues, human rights and minority protection. Dr. Medda-Windischer worked as Legal Officer for various international organisations, including the European Court of Human Rights (CoE/ECHR, Strasbourg), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, BiH), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR, Albania), and the UN Centre for Human Rights (OHCHR, Geneva). At Eurac Research, her research focuses on the protection of minorities in international law and on new minorities stemming from migration, on which she has authored and edited monographs and multi-authored volumes, and published numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes in Italy and abroad. Her latest publications include Language Rights and Duties for New Minorities: Integration through Diversity Governance (with J. Marko), in Language Policy and Conflict Prevention, eds. I. Ulasiuk, et al., Brill-Nijhoff, 2018, and Extending Protection to Migrant Populations in Europe. Old and New Minorities (co-edited with C. Boulter and T.H. Malloy), Routledge, 2019.
Marcus Oda
Marcus Oda joined the Tom Lantos Institute in 2018 as the Programme Manager for Human Rights & Identity. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, Marcus holds a Bachelor’s degree in French Literature from Yale University and a Juris Doctorate from New York University. While at NYU, Marcus’ studies focused on international human rights law, minority rights, and international criminal law. He also served on the editorial board of the Journal of International Law and Politics.Marcus began his career as an intern first at the Public Interest Law Network in Budapest, Hungary, and then at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He was awarded the Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellowship, which gave him the opportunity to conduct advocacy work and legal research at the Russian LGBT Network in St. Petersburg, Russia. Marcus continued to work in the post-Soviet Union region as a Program & Advocacy Officer at the Eurasian Coalition on Male Health in Tallinn, Estonia, where he was responsible for managing legal and advocacy programs aimed at protecting LGBT rights and ensuring access to health services in countries of the region.
Carmen Tanasie
Carmen obtained her first Master’s degrees in Sociology with major in Community Development and European Studies from the University of Craiova, Romania. She holds a second Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Central European University. Her research interests focus strongly on social justice and equality for Roma. Her passion for social justice and equality motivated her to join ERGO Network in 2016, where she is the policy officer responsible for mainstream employment policies, social policies and anti-discrimination legislation. Previously, she has worked on employment policies for Roma in the European Commission and on non- discrimination and non-formal education at the Roma Education Fund.
Fernand de Varennes
Dr Fernand de Varennes completed his law degrees in Canada (LLB, Moncton), the United Kingdom (LLM, London School of Economics and Political Science), and the Netherlands (Dr Juris, Maastricht). He is the former Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Université de Moncton (Canada), Extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria (South Africa), and from 2019 Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong (China). He also holds the mandate of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. He is known as one of the world’s leading experts on the international human rights of minorities with more than 200 publications in some 30 languages and has focused particularly on issues surrounding languages. He was also as Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law and has worked and written in areas of international law such as the prevention of ethnic conflicts, the rights of migrants, the relationship between ethnicity, human rights and democracies.
Balázs Vizi
Graduated in law at the Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), he received PhD in political science from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) in 2006. He has specialized in international human and minority rights law. He is associate professor, head of department at the Department of International Law, Faculty of International and European Studies of the National University of Public Service. He is also senior research associate at the Institute for Minority Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Senior Non-Resident Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI, Flensburg). Balázs Vizi is author of several publications on minority issues in the context of the European Union and co-editor of several books on minority rights protection.
Bengt-Arne Wickström
Bengt-Arne Wickström (1948) is since 2014 active as professor at Andrássy-Universität Budapest, at the moment as guest professor. In the winter semester 2013/2014 he was an acting professor at Universität Konstanz and since 1992 until his retirement in 2013 he was the director of the Institute of Public Economics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Earlier, he held chairs at Johannes-Kepler-Universität in Linz, Austria, and at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is an honorary professor at Universidad de la Habana. His Ph.D. degree in Economics he received in 1976 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His fields of research include welfare theory, especially economic theories of justice, public-choice theory, as well as the theory of pension systems with a certain focus on questions concerning social evolution, especially the evolution of the welfare state. The last 10 to 15 years he has been working on language economics and from 2014 until 2018 he coordinated the Berlin group of the MIME project (Mobility and inclusion in a multilingual Europe) — an EU financed research project involving some 20 universities and research centers. His research has been published in Rationality and Society, Mathematical Social Sciences, Journal of Bioeconomics, Public Choice, Journal of Economics/Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, International Economic Review, and Economics Letters among others.