Transitional Justice Conference

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Conference Agenda

Please click here for more info about the Transitional Justice Project.

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This one-day workshop brings together scholars, practitioners and students to discuss human security  and post-authoritarian, post-conflict justice in a post-Arab Spring context. The wave of revolutionary uprisings and now civil wars across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but also persistent conflict on the African continent, including the Horn and Central Africa, and persecutions in Asia, such as Rohingya in Myanmar or Uyghur in Western China, put the problem  of protection of  human individuals and minority groups from violence and the fear of violence on center stage. Beyond the problems of protecting the most vulnerable there are many other questions about rule of law and accountability for grave human rights violations and the challenges of reconciliatory, local efforts to rebuild the broken socio-economic and socio-cultural ties that must also be addressed. Drawing from case studies across the MENA region and beyond, this workshop aims to provide a space to explore these different questions, drawing from a critical, interdisciplinary perspective. 

Please click here to view the Transitional Justice Conference agenda.

Please see below for biographies of the conference participants.

Ariel I. Ahram is associate professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs and a non-resident fellow of the Baker Institute at Rice University.  He earned a Ph.D. in government and M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis.  He researches and writes widely on security, energy, and environmental issues in the Middle East and North Africa.  Professor Ahram was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. in 2017 and has spoken and lectured at the World Bank, Marine Corps University in Quantico, and the German Institute for Global Affairs.  In 2015, he testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Islamic State’s abuses of women and children.  His first book, Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias, appeared with Stanford University Press in 2011.  He is currently writing a new book on separatist movements in the Arab world.   

Tugba Basaran holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge. She was educated in Berlin, Paris and Cambridge, and worked for several years as assistant professor at the University of Kent. Presently, she is researcher at the Centre d’Etudes Sur Les Conflits, Liberté et Securité in Paris and visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. Her research is at the intersection of political thought, socio-legal studies, postcolonial studies, critical security studies, and borders/mobility. Her publications include the co-edited volume ‘International Political Sociology: Transversal Lines’ (2016) and her monograph ‘Security, Law and Borders: At the Limits of Liberties (2011). Her research is particularly concerned with modern governing techniques, often (but not exclusively) in relation to law, violence, security. She analyses how these techniques create and sustain discriminations and inequalities, and impact social relations, solidarities and indifference. Prior to her academic career, Tugba Basaran has worked for many years in international relations and international development and has lived, amongst others, in El Salvador, Haiti, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. More of Tugba's work may be found here.

Eduardo González Cueva is a Peruvian sociologist and works as an independent professional in the field of transitional justice, providing strategic and technical advice to governments and civil society organizations, toward an effective and fair system of transitional justice. He is currently an advisor to the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms in Sri Lanka. From 2009-15, Gonzalez served as the director of the Truth and Memory program of the International Centre on Transitional Justice, where he provided advice to countries on truth commissions, declassification of archives, memorialization activities, museums, and other instruments. He has provided technical and strategic support to truth-seeking initiatives in places as diverse as East Timor, Morocco, Liberia, Canada, and the Western Balkans. Before joining ICTJ, he helped organize and carry out the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he worked as the director of public hearings and victim protection, and later as an editor of the commission's final report.

Anthony Dworkin is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in London, where he leads the organisation's work in the areas of democracy, human rights and justice. Since 2011 he has worked closely on the EU's relations with North Africa. He has also worked on EU counter-terrorism policy, international justice, and European support for human rights. Among his recent publications for ECFR are "Five Years On: A New European Agenda for North Africa" and "Europe's New Counter-Terror-Wars". He is a visiting lecturer in the Master's Programme on Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. His article "Individual Not Collective: Justifying the Use of Force Against Members of Non-State Armed Groups" is forthcoming in International Law Studies. He has also written regularly for the British magazine Prospect, where he served as contributing editor, and for other publications including the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, International Herald Tribune and El Pais. He was formerly the executive director of the Crimes of War Project and edited the book Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know 2.0.

Arnaud Kurze is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. His "Transitional Justice 2.0" project explores the creation of alternative transitional justice spaces in post-conflict contexts, particularly concentrating on the role of art and the impact of social movements to address human rights abuses. He teaches courses on human rights, social movements and transitional justice in the MA program in International Relations at New York University.  He has published in several academic journals and is the author of several reports on foreign affairs for the government and international organizations. His recent research, "#WarCrimes #PostConflictJustice #Balkans: Youth, Performance Activism and the Politics of Memory" was featured in the Oxford International Journal of Transitional Justice.  He regularly contributes analyses and op-ed articles online for think tanks and other institutions and has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships.

Mr. Megally brings to this position over 40 years of experience conducting and directing investigations and advocacy on human rights violations and humanitarian emergencies. He is currently a senior fellow at the New York University Centre on International Cooperation leading a program on dealing with the root causes of violent extremism.  Prior to this, he has worked at senior levels of both civil society – having served with several international non-governmental organisations - and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, where he was the Director of the Asia, Pacific, Middle East and North Africa Branch (2011-2015).

He was the Acting President of the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) from 2009-2010 and thereafter Vice President for Programs (2010 – 2011). He had served previously as ICTJ’s Director of Middle East and North Africa from 2003-2006. Mr. Megally was the Executive Director for the Middle East and North Africa for Human Rights Watch from 1997-2003. He also headed Amnesty International’s programs in the Middle East from 1984 to 1993 and served as their researcher in the region from 1977 until 1984.

Mr. Megally holds a Bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern History and Politics from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. He did graduate studies at the London School of Economics.   He speaks English, Arabic and French.

Iavor Rangelov is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit in the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Chairman of the Executive Board of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade and Co-Chair of the London Transitional Justice Network. His main research interests are in the areas of human rights and security, transitional justice, and civil society. His current research examines the shfiting resource base of civil society in the context of closing civic space globally, with a focus on new forms of activisim, philanthropy, and technology.

Chandra Lekha Sriram is Professor of International Law and International Relations at the University of East London, where she is founder and Director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict. Her most recent edited volume is Transitional Justice in the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford University Press and Hurst Publishers, 2017).

She has written extensively on human rights, transitional and international crime justice, conflict resolution, conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and has conducted research in Central and South America, the Middle East, and North and sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. She is the author of three monographs: Peace as governance: power-sharing, armed groups, and contemporary peace negotiations (Palgrave 2008); Globalizing justice for mass atrocities: A revolution in accountability (Routledge 2005); and Confronting past human rights violations: Justice versus peace in times of transition (Frank Cass 2004). She received her PhD in Politics from Princeton University and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School; and a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics.  She is the author of the landmark Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000) and many articles and book chapters on international and comparative law, often focusing on political transitions.  In 2012, she published Humanity’s Law (OUP, 2012) setting out a paradigm shift in international affairs. Her latest book is Globalizing Transitional Justice (OUP2014) which explores the last decade in the evolution of the field.  Prof. Teitel is founding co-chair of the American Society of International Law's Interest Group on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Studies Association Human Rights Section as well as on the ILA International Human Rights Committee.  Prof. Teitel is also on the Board of the London Review of International Law. She was a Straus Fellow-in-Residence at New York University Law School’s Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012-2013).

Leslie Vinjamuri is an associate professor in International Relations and Director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice at SOAS, University of London.  Leslie is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS. Her research areas include transatlantic relations, US foreign policy, the politics of international intervention, human rights and justice, and the UN Security Council.  She is an editor of Human Rights Futures (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Her publications have appeared in numerous edited volumes and in journals such as International Security, the Annual Review of Political Science, International Theory, Ethics and International Affairs, Daedalus, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, Law and Contemporary Problems and Survival as well as numerous edited volumes.  She comments regularly on US and its role in the world and her written commentary has appeared in the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, and The World Today.

Dr. Vinjamuri is a member of the Council (a "trustee") of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs where she is also an Associate Fellow on the US and the Americas Programme and an Academy Adjunct Fellow of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs.  She is on the Advisory Board of LSE IDEAS, a Centre of the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics. Leslie is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Leslie is on the Editorial Boards of the Cambridge Studies in International Relations, a book series for Cambridge University Press, and the International Journal of Transitional Justice.  She presently holds a grant from the British Academy for a new project on The Future of Internationalism.

Prior to joining SOAS, Leslie was a member of the academic faculty of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has held Visiting Residential Fellowships at Harvard University and at the London School of Economics.  Leslie has a BA from Wesleyan University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Michael John Williams is the Program Director of the NYU Graduate Program in International Relations. Before coming to NYU, he was Reader (Associate Professor) of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Dr. Williams is a Stephen M. Kellen term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society, and an alumnus of the International Summer Policy Institute at American University. He has held a Robert Bosch Fellowship in Germany, a Visiting Fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford & Nuffield College and a DAAD Fellowship at the Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Science in Potsdam, Germany. He was an investigator in the Sustainable Peacebuilding Network, a collaborative research project involving 20 scholars from six countries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and directed by Prof. Roland Paris (Ottawa).

He is a Senior Associate Scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington D.C. and editor-in-chief of the journal International Politics Reviews and former co-editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies. From 2006-2008 Dr. Williams directed the Transatlantic Security Programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London, he was previously the programme officer for the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford. He has been a consultant to policy makers in the United States and Europe on various international security issues.

Educated at the universities of Delaware, Hamburg, Bath, Berlin, and Moscow, he earned his doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.