Interim Director: John Strawson
John Strawson is a specialist in international law and Middle East studies. He has published on human rights in connection to the Iraq War, the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Islamic Law. In addition to his academic work he has been a human rights activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and other anti-racist organizations. He has held visiting positions at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands, the Institute of Law, Birzeit University in Palestine and, in 2007 was Visiting Professor of Law at the International Islamic University Malaysia. During the communist period he carried out field research on constitutional reform in Bulgaria funded by the British Council and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He was a coordinator of an International Research Collaboration project on legal reform in Palestine supported by the Law and Society Association and the British Academy in 2006-7. He broadcasts on Middle East Politics, Human Rights issues and Islamic Law. His publications include as editor, Law after Ground Zero (GlassHouse/ Routledge-Cavendish, 2002) and as author, Partitioning Palestine: Legal Fundamentalism in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Pluto Press, 2010). For more information click here.
Senior Research Fellow: Dr. Olga Martin-Ortega.
Olga Martin-Ortega joined the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict in November 2006. She holds a Law degree from the University of Sevilla (Spain). Olga received her PhD in International Human Rights Law at the University of Jaen (Spain) in 2006. Before joining the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict she was a lecturer in European Law at Napier University, Edinburgh, and Public International Law and Human Rights in Jaen.
She conducts research in the areas of business and human rights, post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice. Her latest research has focused on the impact of the activities and working methods of multinational enterprises in conflict zones, the rebuilding of rule of law and transitional justice in Liberia and the work of the War Crimes Chamber of the State Court in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For more information about Olga click here.
Research Fellow: Johanna Herman.
Johanna Herman received her MA in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International And Public Affairs in 2006, with a concentration in human rights. She holds a BA in Social and Political Sciences from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. She has worked in various capacities for UN-HABITAT and the United Nations Development Programme in Japan, Afghanistan and New York and has work experience with a number of international NGOs.
Her areas of research interests include transitional justice, peacebuilding and human rights. Her most recent research is on the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia, focusing on the participation of victims as civil parties and on the outreach efforts of the tribunal. She has also written on peacebuilding in Liberia and DDR and transitional justice. She has co-authored War, Conflict and Human Rights with her colleagues at the Centre and co-edited Peacebuilding and Rule of Law in Africa: Just Peace? and Surviving Field Research: Working in Violent and Difficult Situations.
For more information about Johanna click here.
Research Assistant: Ian Patel.
Ian joined the Centre for Human Rights in Conflict in November 2011. He completed his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral research at Cambridge was in legal theory and was funded by Queens’ College. It examined the relationship between testimony and accountability in law, and also considered self-narration as a species of evidence. One aim of this research was to interrogate the ways in which truth and reconciliation commissions rely upon and promote the testimony of victims and perpetrators in their engagement with criminal responsibility. His research interests include the philosophical foundations of legal accountability; theories of self-narration; theories of justice; the relationship between restorative justice and transitional politics; rhetorical theory; and the ‘victim’ in international humanitarian law.
Farid Mohammed Rashid
Farid completed his LLM in International Law and Criminal Justice in 2010 at the University of East London, UK. He studied his BA in Law (2004), at Aleppo University, Syria. His doctoral Project is entitled “An examination of the prosecution strategy at the ICC in the context of establishing the legitimacy of international legal institutions.” This Project will explore the confines of the Prosecutorial discretion of the ICC Prosecutor through critically analyzing the all stages of initiating investigations and prosecutions. Also, it will shed light on the Prosecutor’s power in securing cooperation from international actors to give effect to his or her decisions. The research will be framed on the tension between law and politics through explaining critically the relevant legal theory and international principle, including sovereignty’s principle. It will further examine the relationship between international law and international politics in the context of the prosecutorial discretion of international crimes. The Project will be mainly focusing on the Darfur situation as a case study.
Mertkan Hamit
Mertkan's PhD project is entitled: "Re-thinking about the universality of human rights and the reflections of the human rights discourse on the identity issue in Cyprus". His research aims to interrogate universality of the human rights discourse in the light of the critical legal theory. The case study will be focusing on the human rights discourses in two parts of Cyprus. Cyprus conflict is one of the frozen conflicts, and it is sustained, in addition to many other factors also with the antagonism in many spheres to the “other” side. From this perspective human rights discourses in Cyprus will be analyzed in order to provide a basis to make the critic of the universality. While doing this, the identity and the human rights discourses will be elaborated together, in order to understand if the human rights are “universal” or it is merely “community centric”.
Ellie Smith, Visiting Research Fellow
Ellie Smith is a visiting research fellow at CHRC. She is an international human rights lawyer and researcher with 10 years of experience in the field of justice for survivors of torture, reparations and victims’ rights. Between 2002 and 2010 she was Lead Researcher and expert legal advisor to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and before that she was Head of Research with the UK Immigration Advisory Service. She is a member of the Victims' Rights Working Group to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and the Expert Advisory Panel to the British Home Office on the Trafficking of Women. Ellie guest lectures at the Human Rights Centre at Newcastle University and SOAS. She holds a Degree in law from Cambridge University (1992) and a Masters Degree in Law from LSE (2000). Her current research interests centre around rehabilitation as a legal remedy for survivors of torture, legal/clinical barriers to accessing justice, and how issues of justice are understood by survivors. Her previous publications include A Remedy for Torture Survivors in International Law: Interpreting Rehabilitation.
Dr. Ruth Abril Stoffels, Visiting Researcher, June-July 2011. Dr. Abril is Reader at the Universidad Cardenal Herrera CEU of Valencia. During her stay at the Centre Dr. Abril is conducting research on women and girls in peacebuilding operations. Her work on humanitarian assistance is internationally recognised and has won the Paul Reuter Award in 2003.
Dr. Elena Lopez-Almansa Beaus, Visiting Researcher, November-December 2009. During her stay at the Centre Dr. Lopez Almansa Beaus conducted research on the iligal exploitation of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Dr. Carmen Draghici, Leverhulme Visiting Fellow, January 2008-January 2009. During her stay at the Centre Dr. Draghici undertook the research project on “The search for a fair balance between the imperative of national security and the protection of human rights in the recent caselaw of the European Courts concerning the ‘blacklists’ of alleged terrorists.” She also coordinated the organisation of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar on Counterterrorism, Human Rights and International Legality, which gathered perspectives from scholars, practitioners, human rights activists. The report of the event is available here.
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