The following NGO personnel and University of York staff will contribute to both the work of the Centre and the teaching of the MA in Applied Human Rights:
Professor Neil Carter (Politics Department)
Neil is interested in all aspects of environmental politics and policy and is a founding member of the Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy at the University of York. The second edition of his book, The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, was published in 2007. He has been awarded an ESRC grant of over £92,000 (with Dr Charlotte Burns) for a project titled ‘Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?’. Neil was also commissioned by Friends of the Earth to produce a study of the Labour Government’s environment policies. See Neil Carter and David Ockwell, New Labour, New Environment? – an Analysis of the Labour Government’s Policy on Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss, July 2007 http://www.york.ac.uk/res/celp/webpages/projects/foe/introduction.htm. He will contribute to the MA module on the Environment and Human Rights.
Ron Dudai (currently a policy adviser in Amnesty International)
Ron teaches occasional lectures in the MA, and is review editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice. He's currently a policy adviser in Amnesty International, and in a previous position was a researcher at B'tselem - The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the leading human rights NGO working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where he authored several human rights reports. In 2004 he was a Transitional Justice Fellow hosted by the Institute for Justice in Reconciliation, South Africa (co-sponsored by the International Centre for Transitional Justice), and in 2004-2007 he was a research fellow at the Programme in Law and Human Rights in the Middle East, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His work is focused on political violence and its aftermath, though he also published on a range of other human rights issues, including climate change. His articles appeared in leading journals including Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Transitional Justice, and Terrorism and Political Violence.
Marta Foresti manages the Rights in Action Programme at the Overseas Development Institute (www.odi/rights.org.uk).
Marta's current research interests include: the implementation and feasibility of economic, social and cultural rights; accountability and governance of development and human rights agencies; and social exclusion and inequality. Marta has a particular interest in the methodological dimensions of development and human rights research. She was responsible for developing impact assessment frameworks for Save the Children UK and Amnesty International and has undertaken research and evaluation studies of several UK and European social policies and programmes. Before joining ODI in January 2006, she worked as a senior policy advisor in the Department of Development Policy of the Italian Treasury and was the former Head of the Learning and Impact Assessment team at Save the Children UK. Marta will contribute to the module on Human Rights and Development.
Dr. Louise Haagh (Politics Department)
Louise is a world poverty, labour studies and social policy specialist working in the field of comparative labour market institutions, welfare regimes and the political economy of development. She has written on aspects of economic citizenship, labour policy, income security, democratization and neo-liberalism primarily in the context of Latin America ( Brazil and Chile), East Asia ( South Korea) and Northern Europe. She is associate editor of Basic Income Studies and is a member of the executive committee of the Basic Income Earth Network, an international network that fosters informed discussion about basic income. Louise is currently undertaking research funded by the British Academy on the relationship between market and welfare reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is also engaged in a research network on Perspectives on Work in Europe coordinated by the Institute of Ethics and Poverty Research at the University of Salzburg, and completing a project on Citizenship and Economic Security in OECD and emergent economies. She will contribute to the MA module on Development and Human Rights.
Zoe Norridge (English and Related Literature)
Zoe joined York in October 2010 from the University of Oxford, where she was a research fellow in African and Comparative Literature.
Her doctoral research examined representations of pain in contemporary African literature, written in English and French. Her current work focuses on memorial sites and cultural responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Zoe has published articles on a range of topics including community commemorations of slavery, dance and multiculturalism, Zimbabwean war narratives and Papua New Guinean literature.
Zoe taught African Literature at SOAS and the University of Oxford and in York convenes the MA in Cultures of Empire, Resistance and Postcoloniality.
Professor Mary Renfrew (Health Sciences)
Mary is Director of the Mother and Infant Research Unit in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York. She is a health researcher with a clinical background in midwifery. Her work has a focus on addressing inequalities in health, and it has informed policy and practice in maternity care and maternal and child nutrition nationally and internationally. Mary is developing new work on a rights-based approach to maternal and child health. The work of the Mother and Infant Research Unit is summarised at http://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/research/miru.htm.
Dr. Carolyn Snell (Social Policy)
Carolyn has research interests in public policy analysis, the use of evidence in policy making, local sustainable development, public participation, environmental policy, and the links between poverty and the environment. Between 2004 and 2007 Carolyn worked as a research associate for the Stockholm Environment Institute. The main focus of this research was sustainable transport and land use planning, investigating the barriers to organisational effectiveness and delivery. More recently she has been involved in a study focusing on deprived rural communities in South Yorkshire, assessing how residents access essential goods and services, and how these services might be better delivered. This has developed her interest in the links between poverty, the environment and sustainable development. Carolyn is leading on the social policy, Yorkshire-based element of a new lottery funded project 'OPAL', which seeks to investigate the links between environmental degradation and poverty, and how people in local communities experience environmental problems. Carolyn will participate in the MA module on the Environment and Human Rights.
Dr Clair Smith
(B.A. Hons (Oxford), MIA (Columbia), Ph.D. (LSE)) is a Lecturer in Post-War Recovery Studies at the Department of Politics and the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU). She moved to York in May 2011 from London, where she was a Teaching Fellow in Complex Emergencies at the London School of Economics (LSE) and War to Peace Transitions at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She also held a Visiting Fellowship at the Crisis States Research Centre at the LSE in 2010. Claire completed her doctorate in Development Studies on the politics of democratic transition and post-conflict reconstruction in Indonesia at the LSE in 2009.
Claire specialises in the theory and politics of democratic transition and political change, with a particular interest in development, war, ethno-religious conflict, state building and the role of corruption in post-conflict reconstruction. She has a special interest in political dynamics in the wider Muslim world. Claire has research and policy experience in Indonesia, Cambodia and Lao PDR with the World Bank and several UN agencies. http://www.york.ac.uk/politics/centres/prdu/our-people/claire-smith/