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Send to friendThese featured resource practitioners are participating in the online dialogue titled Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience. Please join them in this conversation! You can contact the practitioners privately by clicking on their name here, or username in the dialogue, and click on the 'contact' tab to write them a message.
Abigail Booth, Programme Manager, Head of Nairobi Office in Kenya and Mikael Ohlsson, Programme Associate in the Thematic Unit/National Human Rights Institutions in Sweden from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI). RWI is an independent academic institution, founded in 1984 at the Law Faculty at Lund University in Sweden. The mission of RWI is to promote universal respect for human rights and humanitarian law, through research, academic education, dissemination of information and institutional development programs. RWI runs degree programmes and undertakes research in human rights in cooperation with the University of Lund. Since the beginning of the 1990s, RWI implements broad scale human rights capacity development programmes, mainly for institutions in developing countries and mainly funded by the Swedish International Devel
opment Co-operation Agency (Sida). The overall objective of the programmes is to contribute to the development of people living in poverty by emphasising the implementation of international human rights standards as a requirement for poverty reduction and a just and sustainable development. The programmes, which are request based and results oriented in character, target government agencies, as well as academic institutions and civil society organisations.
(Note: Other staff members from RWI offices will also be adding comments during the dialogue. Comments made to the dialogue by RWI staff are their own and don't necessarily represent the views of RWI.)
Amy Weismann is the Deputy Director for the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, a multidisciplinary center for teaching , scholarship and outreach to promote human rights and human rights education. Amy is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College (1993, A.B.) and the University of Iowa College of Law (2000 J.D. with Distinction). Amy served as a Law Clerk for the judges of the Seventh Judicial District of Iowa, and as a Legal Intern in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Amy also assisted the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice with the editing of the final judgment produced by the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 for the trial of Japanese military sexual slavery. Before law school, Amy was a humanitarian aid worker in refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia, and a resettlement caseworker for the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services affiliate offices in Eastern Iowa. She currently teaches in the International Studies program, an undergraduate, interdisciplinary major at the University of Iowa. Her course “Human Rights Advocacy: Perspectives and Problem Solving” has been offered for the first time this Fall.
Barbara A. Frey is Director of the Human Rights Program in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. The Program, established in 2001, provides academic, research and internship opportunities for students in the field of international human rights. Frey is well known as an international human rights teacher, advocate and scholar. She served from 2000-2003 as an alternate member of the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. From 2002-2006 Frey served as Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission to conduct a study on the issue of preventing human rights abuses committed with small arms and light weapons. From 1985 through 1996 Frey was Executive Director of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. She is a co-convenor of the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, a network of 44 organizations working to promote research and advocacy on human rights issues.
Diane Sisely is Director of the Australian Centre for Human Rights Education hosted by RMIT University. She is a Member of the Victorian Mental Health Review Board, a founding Board Member of the Human Rights Law Resource Centre and a Member of the Committee for Liberty Victoria. She lead the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria from 1994 -2004, and previously was a Co Chair of Reconciliation Victoria and Chaired the Victorian Department of Human Services’ Human Research Ethics Committee. She has extensive knowledge and experience in working with all sectors of society to further respect for human rights.
Dr. Mingzhen Ge, is an Associate Professor at the Human Rights Center, Law School, Shandong University in China providing human rights law courses (including bilingual international human rights law course) for undergraduate and graduate students. He is now doing research about ESCR, torture and human rights, food rights, health rights, and human rights education.
Jadwiga Maczynska, Project Manager, Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre. Jadwiga is a lawyer and human rights practitioner. Since her graduation from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, she has been engaged in various projects, researching and promoting human rights. Since 2006 she has been cooperating with Jagiellonian University Human Rights Center and Legal Clinic, teaching refugee and human rights law. Currently serving as a consultant for UNHCR office in Warsaw. Having successfully completed New Tactics-based translation and dissemination project she has been using New Tactics materials in her work with Legal Clinic students to illustrate innovative examples of using legal mechanism to effectively protect victims of human rights violations.
Nicole Palasz is the K-16 Outreach Coordinator at the Institute of World Affairs, Center for International Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the United States. The Institute of World Affairs is responsible for developing community partnerships, resources and programs to increase global education and awareness. She is a former staff member of the New Tactics in Human Rights project (2002-2005) and has continued to volunteer her time with New Tactics project assisting New Tactics in developing resources for academic classroom use. She holds Masters degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Robin Kirk is an award-winning author and human rights activist, teaches at Duke University and coordinates the Duke Human Rights Center. She is the author of three books, including More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She is the coeditor of The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and helps edit Duke University Press’s Reader series.
Susan Atwood has twenty five years of experience in the fields of international political development and community participation in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. She is currently the global leadership instructor on the capstone course for the University of Minnesota’s Leadership minor for undergraduates: Leadership for Global Citizenship.
Alice Nderitu is the Director ESJ Fahamu. She has worked previously as a journalist, a teacher as well as programme head on education and media programmes at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Prisons. She has worked on designing and implementing capacity-building strategies, and on the entrenchment of human rights in formal curricula in the school system and law enforcement agencies.
She specializes in training on human rights, peace and conflict. She is also experienced in development of curriculums, information,education and communication materials. She has developed training materials for and built capacities of UN agencies, civil society organizations, Law Enforcement and Military officers at the International Military Peace Support training College and the Rwanda Military Academy as well as several Police and Prisons training officers.
