Keynote speakers and chairs
Keynote speakers
Wolfgang Benedek is professor emeritus at the University of Graz, where he taught international law with a focus on human rights, human security and international economic law. He was director of the Institute of International Law and International Relations and of the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ETC) of the University of Graz; lecturer at Vienna Diplomatic Academy and at the European Master Programmes on Human Rights and Democracy in Venice and Sarajevo. He was OSCE rapporteur under the Moscow Mechanism on Chechnya (2018) and on Belarus (2019).
Karen E. Smith is a Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main area of research is the ‘international relations of the European Union’, and she has written extensively on the formulation and implementation of common EU foreign policies. She has examined the EU’s pursuit of ‘ethical’ foreign policy goals such as promoting human rights and democracy, and policy-making within European states regarding genocide. She is now working on projects on women in foreign policy-making and diplomacy, and on the role of that emotions play in EU foreign policy-making.
Ian Fry is the first Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change. He is an international environmental law and policy expert. He has primarily focussed on mitigation policies and loss and damage associated with the Paris Agreement, Kyoto Protocol and related instruments. Mr. Fry worked for the Tuvalu government for over 21 years and was appointed as their Ambassador for Climate Change and Environment 2015-2019. He teaches International Environmental Policy and Environmental Law at the Fenner School of Environment and Society of the Australian National University.
Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov of Kazakhstan took up the mandate of OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities on 4 December 2020. Amb. Abdrakhmanov joined the Kazakhstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993 and held a number of key positions. Amb. Abdrakhmanov served as Kazakhstan’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE from 2007 to 2013 and Chaired the OSCE Permanent Council in 2010. He was instrumental in organizing the first OSCE Summit in 11 years in December 2010, during which the Astana Commemorative Declaration: Towards a Security Community was adopted.
Jean Fabre is a former high-level UN official and international expert on Social and Solidarity Economy. A graduate in physics, he has been a conscientious objector and long-standing activist, engaged in France and Europe in battles for civil rights, against nuclear power and against poverty and hunger in the world. An official and then Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Geneva, he contributed to the promotion of the Human Development Index (HDI) and the drafting and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. An expert on Social and Solidarity Economy, he is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Forum for the SSE (ESSFI) and an advisor to the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE).
Christina Kokkinasis is Director for Values and Multilateral Relations/Deputy Managing Director of Managing Directorate Global at the European External Action Service. She has over 26 years of experience in foreign policy and multilateral diplomacy first with the Austrian diplomatic service and then with the European Union and the United Nations.
Lena Simet is a senior researcher and advocate on poverty and inequality at Human Rights Watch. Her research focuses on social protection, labor rights in non-standard forms of employment like the app-based gig economy, and how austerity-driven budget cuts and the privatization of basic essential services can undermine human rights. Lena is a member of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development's Steering Committee.
Jihad Nammour is the Academic Coordinator of the Arab Master’s Program in Human Rights and Democratisation, part of the Global Campus of Human Rights. He is a lecturer at the Institute of Political Sciences. Legal theory and Political sociology are his areas of study. He holds a DEA in Law and Political Science from Saint Joseph University. His latest research focuses on forced migration. He develops educational programmes within several Lebanese NGOs.
Chairs
Paolo De Stefani is researcher, senior lecturer and aggregate professor in international law at the University of Padova, Department of Political Sciences, law and international studies. He teaches human rights international law at BA and MA level at the University of Padova, where he is academic coordinator of the master's degree in human rights and multilevel governance. He is director of the Italian yearbook of human rights, and deputy coordinator of the joint international PhD in Human rights, society and multilevel governance. He is national director for Italy of the European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation (Global Campus of human rights, Venice).
Gerd Oberleitner is associate professor of international law, UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Human Security, and Director of the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy at the University of Graz. He served as Legal Adviser in the Human Rights Department of the Austrian Foreign Ministry and was Lecturer in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights, Visiting Scholar at the European Inter-University Centre Venice and the Université du Quebéc à Montréal and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Prishtina, Ljubljana and Rutgers University. He teaches in the Global Campus of Human Rights and is course instructor in online courses of umanrightscampus.org. His main research interests are in the areas of international human rights law, the law of international organisations, international humanitarian law and human security.
Corinne Lennox is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Co-Director of the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research focuses on issues of minority and indigenous rights protection, civil society mobilisation for human rights and on human rights and development. She has worked for many years as a human rights practitioner with various NGOs, including at Minority Rights Group International, and has been an advisor on minority and indigenous rights to governments, the UNDP and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is Programme Director for the distance-learning MA in Human Rights offered by the University of London and faculty for the campus-based MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights, offered by the School of Advanced Study. Her current research focuses on issues of minority and indigenous rights protection, civil society mobilisation for human rights and on human rights and development.
Lisa Heschl is a post-doctoral research and teaching fellow at the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, University of Graz. She received her Ph.D. in law from the University of Graz, holds a European Master Degree in Human Rights and Democratization (E.MA) and has been a Marie Curie visiting research fellow at the University of Deusto, Bilbao. Her research interest include the European migration and asylum policy and legislation , the extraterritorial application of international and European refugee and human rights law and its relation to European border policies. She is engaged in various research and educational projects dealing with human rights, migration and asylum (e.g. Erasmus+ PROMIG project; H2020 LEGIT) and has published in the field of migration and human rights (e.g. Salomon/Heschl/Benedek/Oberleitner, Blurring Boundaries – Human Security and Migration, Brill, forthcoming).
Damien Short is Co-Director of the Human Rights Consortium (HRC) and a Professor of Human Rights and Environmental Justice at the School of Advanced Study. He has researched and published extensively in the areas of indigenous peoples’ rights, genocide studies, reconciliation projects and environmental human rights. He is currently researching the human rights impacts of extreme energy processes. He is currently researching the human rights impacts of extreme energy processes (e.g Tar Sands and Fracking). Professor Short is a regular academic contributor to the United Nation’s ‘Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ and an academic consultant for the ‘Ethical Trade Task Force’ of the Soil Association. Professor Short has also worked with a variety of NGOs including Amnesty International, War on Want, Survival International, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs; and with a range of campaign groups including Eradicating Ecocide, Biofuelwatch, Climate Justice Collective and the UK Tar Sands Network. He currently advises local anti-fracking groups in the UK and county councils on the human rights implications of unconventional (extreme) energy extraction processes such as fracking.
Magdalena Ratajczak is professor in the Institute of International Studies, University of Wroclaw. Deputy director of the Institute of International Studies, head of the Section of International Communication at the Institute of International Studies, coordinator of the Double Degree Programme with Padua University in the Institute of International Studies. Member of International Editorial Intercultural Board "Peace Human Rights Governance Journal" (University of Padua), chair of the Section of and International Communication of Polish Communication Association. A member of Research Team „Helvetic Iniciative”. Her main fields of interests are transcultural communication, diaspora and ethnic media in Europe, studies in cultural pluralism in European media, diaspora diplomacy, refugees and human rights, Swiss multiculturality and Swiss media system.
Sara Pennicino is Associate Professor of Comparative Law, University of Padova and Adjunct Professor of International Law at The Johns Hopkins University, SAIS Europe. She holds the position of Research Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (CCSDD). Her current academic work addresses the role played by electoral watchdog bodies in transitional and post conflict countries, with particular reference to countries that were assisted by the international community in organizing and conducting elections on the one hand, and solving electoral disputes on the other.