José Aylwin is a Chilean human rights lawyer who specializes in indigenous peoples’ and citizens’ rights in Latin America. He is Co-Director of the Observatorio Ciudadano (Citizens’ Watch), a human rights NGO based in Temuco and Santiago, Chile. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Law at the Universidad Austral de Chile (Valdivia, Chile), where he teaches a course on the rights of indigenous peoples. He has also been a visiting professor at McGill University (Montreal, Canada), the Universidad de Deusto (Bilbao, Spain), and the University of Auckland (Auckland, New Zealand). His research focuses on indigenous rights, natural resources and resource extraction, land rights, globalization, and human rights in Chile and Latin America. His work has been published by various organizations including the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, and the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs. He is currently a member of the National Council of the Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Institute for Human Rights), a member of the Assembly of the Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (Inter American Institute for Human Rights), and on the Board of Directors of the North South Institute and of ACCION, a Chilean association of NGOs. Aylwin received a degree in legal and social studies from the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile and a Master in Laws from the School of Law of the University of British Columbia.
Ana-Isabel Braconnier is a PhD student in the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research embraces multicultural and intercultural studies as well as law and society studies. She is interested in understanding the social and political relations within the courtrooms in Guatemala that shape the ground for indigenous peoples’ rights and human rights discourses. Before joining the doctoral program, she occupied several positions as a socio-political consultant for nonprofit organizations in Guatemala City and Quetzaltenango. Recently, she has focused on legal pluralism, indigenous peoples’ rights to land, territory and access to justice, and the judiciary in Guatemala. As a consultant for the Mayan Bar Association of Guatemala, she accomplished an ethnographic study about the judicial politics in Guatemala from an indigenous and gender perspective (2014-2015). She received a BA and Master’s degree in Comparative Political Sociology with a focus on Latin America from Sciences Po Paris.
Daniel Brinks is an Associate Professor of Government and Co-director of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting or extending human rights and many of the basic rights associated with democracy, with a primary regional interest in Latin America. He is currently at work on a project that examines constitutional change in Latin America since about 1975, focusing especially on judicial institutions and constitutional review. He has published articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the Texas International Law Journal. His books Courting Social Justice: The Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (co-edited with Varun Gauri) and The Judicial Response to Police Violence in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law were both published by Cambridge University Press. Brinks received a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and a JD from the University of Michigan.
James Brudney is Professor of Law at Fordham University. Previously, he was the Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he taught for nineteen years. Professor Brudney served for six years as Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor. He was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown Law Center and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. At Fordham, Professor Brudney teaches Labor Law, Employment Law, International Labor Law, and Legislation and Regulation. In recent years, he has published articles or book chapters on leading issues in transnational labor law: addressing obstacles to the enforcement of freedom of association standards in corporate codes of social responsibility (2012); analyzing the Immokalee Workers model as a means of promoting decent labor standards in corporate supply chains (2016); and (forthcoming 2017) examining the internationalization of sources of labor law since the 1990s. Professor Brudney is co-chair of the Public Review Board for the United Auto Workers International Union, and is a member of the Committee of Experts of the International Labor Organization.
Luis Cárcamo-Huechante is a scholar of Mapuche origin who grew up in Tralcao, a rural village in the River Region of Valdivia in southern Chile. He taught at Harvard University between 2001 and 2009. Since 2009, he has taught Latin American and indigenous literatures and cultures at The University of Texas at Austin. He recently co-edited an interdisciplinary collection of essays entitled Ta iñ fijke xipa rakizuameluwün. Historia, colonialismo y resistencia desde el país Mapuche (Santiago: Ediciones de Historia Mapuche, 2012); a book that brings together fourteen Mapuche authors to examine the many dimensions of Mapuche history, relying upon the concept of colonialism as the axis of debate and reflection on historical, political, cultural and territorial issues. Cárcamo-Huechante received a BA from Universidad Austral de Chile, an MA in Spanish from the University of Oregon, and a PhD in Hispanic Literatures from Cornell University.
Jessica Champagne is the Director of Research and Advocacy for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor rights monitoring organization. She coordinates investigations into apparel factories around the world and engages with international apparel brands and retailers to correct violations. Advocacy by Champagne and her team has resulted in millions of dollars being paid to garment workers who were denied legally required compensation. Prior to joining WRC, she was a Fulbright research scholar in Indonesia and served as Organizing Coordinator for the Service Employees International Union.
Marcus Colchester is the Senior Policy Advisor at Forest Peoples Programme and the Co-Chair of the High Conservation Values Resource Network. His work focuses on indigenous rights, natural resource management, agroforestry, and sustainability. He founded Forest Peoples Programme in 1990 in order to support indigenous peoples’ struggles to defend their lands and livelihoods from deforestation. Colchester received a Pew Foundation Conservation Fellowship in 1994 and the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology in 2001. In 2006, his report entitled “Justice in the Forest: Rural livelihoods and forest law enforcement” was published by the Center for International Forestry Research. His articles have appeared in numerous publications including Cultural Survival Quarterly, Land Reform Bulletin, World Rainforest Bulletin, Nomadic Peoples, and Anthropology Today. Colchester received an MA in Zoology and PhD in Social Anthropology from Oxford University.
** NB: Marcus will be participating in the workshop remotely via videolink **
Julia Dehm is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, working on a multi-year project rethinking human rights for the 21st century. Dehm was previously a Resident Fellow at the Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) at Harvard Law School. Her research addresses international climate change law and regulation, transnational carbon markets and the governance of natural resources. She has published several academic articles including in Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, the London Review of International Law and the Macquarie Journal of International and Comparative Environmental Law as well as in climate justice-themed special editions of the Journal of Australian Political Economy and Local-Global Journal. She was co-editor of the report Occupy Policing: A Report into the Effects and Legality of the Eviction of Occupy Melbourne from City Square on 21 October 2011 and a member of the Occupy Melbourne Legal Support Team that was awarded the 2012 Tim McCoy Award for human rights work by the Federation of Community Legal Centers. She has been active with climate justice groups, co-authoring a Friends of the Earth International Report, In the REDD+: Australia's Carbon Offset Projects in Central Kalimantan (2012). She received a BA, LLB (Hons), and PhD from the University of Melbourne.
Robert Delp is the Director of the Better Builder Program at Workers Defense Project, an Austin-based organization that aims to empower low-wage workers to achieve fair employment through education, direct services, organizing and strategic partnerships. The Better Builder Program was designed to address the poor, and often deadly, conditions that construction workers face on a daily basis. Prior to joining WDP, Delp taught as an adjunct professor at Cardiff University and St. Edward’s University and served as the Assistant Press Secretary of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Delp received a BA from Texas Tech University and an MA and PhD from Cardiff University in Wales.
Ariel Dulitzky is Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Human Rights Clinic, and Director of the Latin American Initiative. He is a leading expert in the inter-American human rights system. In 2010, he was appointed to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and served as its Chair-Rapporteur from 2013 to 2015. Prior to joining the University of Texas, he was the Assistant Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Professor Dulitzky has published extensively on human rights, the inter-American human rights system, racial discrimination, and the rule of law in Latin America. Professor Dulitzky received a JD from the University of Buenos Aires School of Law and an LLM from Harvard Law School.
Karen Engle is the Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and founder and co-director of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international human rights law, and legal theory. Professor Engle is at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during the 2016-17 academic year, where she is the Deborah Lunder and Alan Ezekowitz Founders’ Circle Member. She is author of numerous scholarly articles and The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy (Duke University Press, 2010), which received the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Human Rights. She is co-editor of Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture (Routledge, 1995). Professor Engle received a Bellagio Residency Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2009 and an assignment as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Bogotá in 2010. She received a BA from Baylor University and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT Austin. His research explores the vast historical, cultural, and natural significance of the African continent and its place in the world. A native of Nigeria, he is a prominent scholar in the field of African studies. He is the author of over 100 books including Culture and Customs of Nigeria (Greenwood Press, 2000), Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria, 1945-1965 (Kent State University Press, 2004), and A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir (University of Michigan Press, 2005). The Association of Third World Studies selected Falola’s most recent publication, Ibadan: Foundation, Growth and Change, 1830-1960 (Bookcraft, 2012), for the 2013 Cecil B. Curry Book Award. Falola received a BA and PhD in History from the University of Ife in Nigeria.
Erika George is the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law at the University of Utah College of Law. Professor George's scholarship has appeared in the California Law Review, the Michigan Journal of International Law, the New York University Journal of International Law and Policy, and the annual proceedings of the American Society of International Law. Her research interests include globalization and the indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated nature of civil liberties and socioeconomic rights; cultural pluralism and rights universalism; gender violence and gender equality; justice and peace promotion in post-conflict societies; environmental justice; and the use of documentary film in human rights advocacy and education. Her current research explores the responsibility of transnational corporations to respect international human rights and various efforts to hold business enterprises accountable for alleged abuses. She has worked with Human Rights Watch to conduct investigations in South Africa on women’s rights, children’s rights, violence, the right to education, and abuses related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She wrote a book-length report, Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools, which received widespread media coverage in South Africa and internationally. She currently serves as special counsel to the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Professor George served as a law clerk for Judge William T. Hart on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, as a litigation associate for the law firms of Jenner & Block in Chicago and Coudert Brothers LLP in New York City, and as a fellow and later consultant to Human Rights Watch. She received a BA from the University of Chicago, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago.
Charles Hale is the Chair for Western Hemispheric Trade Studies in the Department of Anthropology. An internationally renowned activist in anthropology, his research focuses on race and ethnicity, identity politics, and consciousness and resistance. He is a recent past president of Latin American Studies Association and the author of Más que un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala and Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987. He is also the editor of Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship. He taught at the University of California, Davis before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. Hale received a BA from Harvard and a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University.
Farai Maguwu is the founding Director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, an organization working on improved governance of natural resources in Zimbabwe. Much of his research focuses on human rights abuses and illicit trade of diamonds in Zimbabwe. In 2011 Maguwu’s passionate work in human rights led to his arrest, and he was charged and detained for 40 days by the Zimbabwean government. Maguwu partnered with Human Rights Watch researchers to document injustices against local villagers in Marange at the hands of soldiers controlled by the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front. He was later awarded the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism by Human Rights Watch. He regularly speaks at conferences on conflict diamonds and alternatives to mining. Maguwu is a PhD candidate at the School of Developmental Studies, University of Kwazulu Natal. He received a BA and MA in Peace and Governance from Africa University and an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European University Center for Peace Studies in Austria.
Justine Nolan is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of NSW and the Deputy Director of the Australian Human Rights Centre. Her research focuses on the intersection of business and human rights, corporate accountability and international labor law. She is a co-author of The International Law of Human Rights and Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice. Formerly the Director of the Business and Human Rights program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), Nolan examined ways in which to prevent and remedy corporate violations of human rights and was closely involved in the establishment of the Fair Labor Association. She is an editor of the Australian Journal of Human Rights, Business and Human Rights Journal and the Human Rights Defender. Nolan holds an MPP from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Laws from the Australian National University.
Geisselle Vanessa Sánchez Monge is a program manager and researcher for ActionAid Guatemala, where she works to defend the land rights of indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups. Her most recent research focuses on issues of land governance in Guatemala’s Northern Lowlands and emphasizes action needed by the Guatemalan government to meet the norms provided by the UN Tenure Guidelines (the VGGTS). She has been published in the Latin American Journal of Socio-Environmental Studies and received a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLASCO).
Sean Sellers is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility (WSR) Network. Previously, he was the Senior Investigator at the Fair Food Standards Council and a Food and Community Fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He has worked to improve labor conditions in U.S. agriculture and develop a sustainable agricultural industry. In 2011, Sellers helped implement the Fair Food Program, a worker-led social responsibility program, across the Florida tomato industry and beyond. He received an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Josephine Weinberg is the co-founder of the PASE Legal Services Office, a community advocacy project that provides free assistance and training to Nicaraguan agricultural workers and their families affected by the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of non-traditional causes (CKDnT). She previously served as the Director of Law and Human Rights at La Isla Network, which works to end CKDnT globally. Weinberg received an MA in International Law and Human Rights from the University for Peace and a JD from New College of California School of Law.
