Siri Gloppen is Director at the Centre of Law and Social Transformation. Political scientist with a research focus in the intersection between law and politics. Siri Gloppen is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. With a research focus in the intersection between law and politics her work spans: legal mobilization and the role of courts in social transformation, democratization and institutionalization of accountability structures, constitution-making, election processes, human rights, transitional justice and reconciliation. Main empirical focus is southern and eastern Africa.
Malcolm Langford is Co-Director at the Centre of Law and Social Transformation and Senior Researcher at CMI. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Fridtjof Nansen Institute and the Co-Director of Global School on Socio-Economic Rights. He is also former Research Fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and Director of the Socio-Economic Rights Programme. His recent publications include Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014), edited with B. Cousins, J. Dugard and T. Madlingozi.
Camila Gianella (MSc, PhD) is a researcher at CMI and a post doctoral fellow at the department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen in the project Sexual and Reproductive Rights (SRR) Lawfare: Global battles over sexual and reproductive rights, driving forces and impacts, Dr. Gianella is also part of the team of two related project: Abortion Rights lawfare in Latin America and International Sexual and Reproductive Rights Lawfare. Gianella has a PhD from the University of Bergen. In her dissertation she analyzed the process of implementation of a structural court decision from the Colombian Constitutional Court which asked for major reforms within the health system. Prior to her PhD from the University of Bergen, Camila worked as researcher and consultant for projects on maternal health, the right to health, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, mental health and transitional justice.
Bruce M. Wilson (Ph.D. Washington University) is Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida and Associated Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway. His research on Latin American politics and comparative judicial politics has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Comparative Politics, Journal of Politics in Latin America, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. His books include, Costa Rica: Politics, Economics, and Democracy (1998) and a co-authored book, Courts and Political Power in Latin America and Africa (2010). He is former editor of The Latin Americanist and is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Political Science Education.
Bergen Exchanges Participants:
Deniz Akin has B.S. in Sociology from Middle East Technical University. She completed her M.Phil. in Gender and Development from University of Bergen. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture NTNU.
Leonardo R. Arriola is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on democratization and political violence in developing countries. He has conducted field research in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal, and Zambia. His work has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics. He is author of Multiethnic Coalitions in Africa: Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns (Cambridge University Press), which received a best book award from the African Politics section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 2013 and an honorable mention for the Gregory Luebbert Prize for best book from APSA’s Comparative Politics section in 2014. Arriola has previously been a national fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a visiting scholar at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame University, a Fulbright scholar at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University, and a visiting researcher at the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal. He currently serves on the editorial boards of African Affairs, Comparative Politics, and Comparative Political Studies.
Berit Austveg is educated as a physician. From 1976-88 I headed a clinic in Oslo for immigrants. From 1988 I have worked as community health physician, at global, national and country levels, in Norad, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Health, UNFPA, Norwegian Board of Health Supervision and as acting Chief County Medical Officer in Finnmark county. The main focus in global health has been sexual and reproductive health, including negotiating at ICPD in Cairo in 1994, and at follow-up global conferences. For 6 years I was at the Board of Directors of Ipas, and for 8 years chair of the Board of Trustees of Reproductive Health Matters. I have written textbooks on population issues, sexual and reproductive health, and health work for migrants.
Susan Banki‘s research interests lie in the political, institutional, and legal contexts that explain the roots of and solutions to international human rights violations. In particular, she is
interested in the ways that questions of sovereignty, citizenship/membership and humanitarian principles have shaped our understanding of and reactions to various transnational phenomena, such as the international human rights regime, international migration and the provision of international aid. Susan’s focus is in the Asia-Pacific region, where she has conducted extensive field research in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh and Japan on refugee/migrant protection, statelessness and border control. She is currently investigating the local, regional and international mechanisms (and the interactions between them) that serve as potential levers for change.
Synnøve Bendixsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Social 
Anthropology, University of Bergen (Norway). Her research interests include irregular migration, political mobilisation, Islam and Muslims in Europe, the study of inclusion and exclusion, and processes of marginalization. She has written a number of articles, book chapters, and edited volumes and one monograph: The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin (Brill 2013). Bendixsen has been a visiting scholar at COMPAS, Oxford University, and New York University. Since 2013 she is the co-editor of the Nordic Journal of Migration Research.
Henrik Litleré Bentsen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Comparative Politics at the
University of Bergen, where he also received his master’s degree in 2012 and worked for almost two years as a research assistant. He participates on an ongoing project on judicial behavior in the Supreme Court of Norway led by Professor Gunnar Grendstad. His research interests include judicial politics, dissenting behavior and public opinion of court decisions, with a particular focus on the Supreme Court of Norway. Bentsen has written several newspaper articles and been a frequent contributor the blog BT Innsikt, in which he has written about the Supreme Court’s role in the broader social context, and about how much power courts should possess in relation to the other branches of government.
Susanne Bygnes is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of sociology and heads the interdiciplinary research unit IMER Bergen (International Migration and Ethnic Relations). Her main research interests include international migration to and within Europe, majority-minority relations, social movements and protest.
Mercedes Cavallo is a 32 years old Argentine feminist lawyer. She received her LL.B. from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in 2007, her LL.M. on Reproductive Rights from University of Toronto in 2009, her Diploma on Women and Human Rights from Universidad de Chile in 2011, and her Specialization on Criminal Law from University Torcuato Di Tella in 2016. Mercedes taught “Jurisprudence” at Universidad de Palermo and currently teaches “Introduction to Argentine Constitutional Law” and “Gender and Criminal Law” at University Torcuato Di Tella. She has also published several journal and newspaper articles, as well as book chapters on women’s rights. Her professional path includes being a law clerk at the Federal Supreme Court of Argentina, the Director of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Area at Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC), and, since 2013, being a Secretary at the 4th National Tribunal on Criminal Federal Law in Buenos Aires City, Argentina, where she is in charge of a groups of 20 lawyers who investigate federal crimes. Currently she is on leave from her judiciary work to start her SJD on Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto this fall.
Rudo Chigudu is a feminist, activist and artist fiercely committed to social justice and human rights particularly women’s sexual and reproductive rights. She has worked for close to a decade with young women on issues of sexuality and leadership. Using creative arts as a feminist popular education tool to politicise women’s sexuality and its linkage to broader political discourse. She is popularly known as a V warrior for her engagement in the struggles surrounding women’s bodily autonomy and sexual diversity. Rudo has a keen interest in international human rights law and is currently studying toward a Master of Philosophy in Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Africa. Combining rights knowledge with and creative arts Rudo seeks to engage in more meaningful social justice for women in the social, economic and political arenas.
Lara Côrtes holds a PhD in Public Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo and a Master’s degree in Law and Development from the São Paulo Law School of Fundacao Getulio Vargas. Her research focuses on the promotion of social rights through the functioning of state institutions. In Brazil, Côrtes worked as a lawyer, and later as a public servant at the State of São Paulo as well as with research at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas. In 2012, she moved to Norway where she taught a semester of “Brazilian Studies and Portuguese” at the University of Bergen. She has also collaborated with the Chr. Michelsen Institute in research projects concerning media coverage in Angola and Mozambique. Lara is currently working at the University of Bergen as part of the multidisciplinary team of the project “Poverty, Language and Media in Latin America: The cases of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico” and is an affiliate researcher of the Centre on Law & Social Transformation, where she is involved in a project about the impact of the international recognition of the human right to water.
Arnhild Voll Eek is an intern at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation. She is a law student at the Faculty of Law in Bergen and will be writing her thesis within the field of administrative and welfare law this fall. During the Bergen Exchanges she will help with logistics and will be available for any questions concerning this.
Sara Ekblom 
is a Research assistant at the Department of comparative politics, University of Bergen. Fourth-year student of the Master’s programme in Law, University of Bergen. Part-time social worker for people exposed to domestic violence. Previously worked for a help center for refugees (South Africa) and a primary school for disadvantaged children (Kenya), and undertaken a number of social sciences courses.
Olav Elgvin is a PhD candidate at the Department of Comparative Politics, UiB; and a researcher at the Fafo Institute for Social Research in Oslo. He is doing his PhD on political ideology among Islamic movements in Western Europe. As a researcher at Fafo, he has done research on various issues concerning immigrant incorporation in Norway, ranging from the integration of refugess in the labor market to the experiences of LHBT people in migrant communities. Elgvin contributes frequently to Norwegian media outlets, and is a regular op-ed columnist in the newspaper Klassekampen.
Marthe Sleire Engedahl is an intern at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation. She is currently writing her master thesis within the field of refugee law at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen. Marthe will be helping with logistics throughout the Bergen Exchanges, in addition to taking people for morning runs. Do not hesitate to grab a hold of her if she can be at help on either of those issues!
Annika Engelbert is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, working at the intersection of law and social sciences on human rights and administrative law issues in developing countries. Annika holds a Master’s degree in European Studies from the University of Osnabrück in Germany. Following her graduation, she joined the German International Cooperation (GIZ) in Brussels and worked for various development projects financed by the European Commission. From 2012 to 2015, Annika has worked as a research associate in a project on procurement law and anti-corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa, a topic that she also investigates in her PhD project. Since 2016, Annika is involved as a research associate in a project on rights-based approaches to social health protection, focusing on the principles of participation and accountability in the health systems of Ghana and Indonesia.
Charles R. Epp is University Distinguished Professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration, University of Kansas. His research focuses on law, social change and administrative reform, with a particular emphasis on rights, racial discrimination, and strategic litigation for social change. His research, supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, has resulted in many journal articles and several books published by the University of Chicago Press: The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective, one of the most cited books in law & society scholarship which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award and the Lasting Contribution Award of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, Making Rights Real: Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Creation of the Legalistic State, which was named an Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association, and Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship, co-authored with colleagues Steven Maynard-Moody and Donald Haider-Markel, which won the Best Book Award from the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Public Administration Research and the Choice outstanding academic title award. He is currently engaged in two major studies, one on the growing role of the police in the American state and the other on strategic litigation to address greenhouse gas emissions.
Runa Falk is doing her master in Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen.
Prof Roberto Gargarella is a distinguished Argentine lawyer and sociologist and the author of numerous works on theories of democracy, political and legal philosophy. His last two books are The legal foundations of inequality (Cambridge UP 2010) and Latin American Constitutionalism (Oxford UP 2013). Roberto has doctoral degrees from Universidad de Buenos Aires (1991) and University of Chicago (1993) and Master Degrees from FLACSO (1990) and the University of Chicago (LLM, 1992). He pursued post-doctoral studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Joseph Raz (1994), where he also worked with Professor G.A. Cohen, pursuing collaborative research with a group of ‘Analytical Marxists’, which he had begun in the US, together with Professors Jon Elster and Adam Przeworski. Roberto Gargarella is CONICET fellow and Professor of Law at Torcuato Di Tella, and Buenos Aires Universities in Argentina and has held visiting professorships at leading universities in Europe and the Americas including Harvard and Columbia (USA), ITAM (Mexico) Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Genoa (Italy) Oslo and Bergen (Norway). In 2014 he was the Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at University College London. Roberto is a long-term CMI affiliated researcher and a founding member and Global Fellow of the Centre on Law & Social Transformation.
Linda Gröning is professor of law, at Bergen University. She also holds a professor II position at the Centre for research and education in forensic psychiatry and psychology in Bergen (Helse Vest). Gröning received her doctoral degree in Lund (Juris. Dr.), Sweden, 2008 and moved to Bergen and Norway 2009 for post doc research. Her research focus is primarily on the general and theoretical aspects of the criminal law, and she has published extensively within this area. Her most recent publication, “Frihet, forbrytelse og straff” is a comprehensive textbook in criminal law that is written in co-authorship with Erling Johannes Husabø and Jørn Jacobsen.
LaDawn Haglund is associate professor of Justice and Social Inquiry, Senior Sustainability Scholar at the Global Institute of Sustainability, and Faculty Fellow at the Centre for Law and Global Affairs at Arizona State University. Her research investigates the legal, institutional, and political mechanisms by which social rights—specifically, the human right to water and sanitation, and the right to a healthy environment—are more or less effectively translated into practices. Her work has received support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the Brazilian Fulbright Commission. She is co-editor (with Robin Stryker) of Closing the Rights Gap: From Human Rights to Social Transformation (UC Press) and author of Limiting Resources: Market-Led Reform and the Transformation of Public Goods (Penn State Press), as well as articles in Latin American Perspectives, Journal of Human Rights, Water Policy, and European Journal of Sociology. She co-coordinates Collaborative Research Network on Economic and Social Rights (CRN 47) for the Law and Society Association. She is past chair of the Human Rights section of the American Sociological Association and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University.
Dr Clara Burbano-Herrera, PhD in Law (Ghent University), LLM in Fundamental Rights (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Postgraduate Degree in Constitutional Law (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Law Degree (Universidad de los Andes), is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, where she also teaches Human Rights in Developing Countries. Clara is author of Provisional Measures in the Case Law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Intersentia, 2012), and Las Medidas Provisionales en Caso de Vida o Muerte (Editorial Porrúa, 2013), and co-author of Procederen voor het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens (The Procedure before the European Court of Human Rights – Intersentia, 2011). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Inter-American & European Human Rights Journal (IAEHRJ), co-founder and executive member of the Inter- American Human Rights Network, and she co-hosts a Blog on Top International Human Rights Courses, Traineeships & Jobs in Europe. E-mail: Clara.BurbanoHerrera@Ugent.be
Thuto Moratuoa Hlalele is currently the sexual and reproductive rights project coordinator and a special Projects coordinator at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. She is a human rights activist, she works towards human rights education in Africa, a greater awareness of human rights and the improvement of the rights of women, sexual minorities and other disadvantaged or marginalised persons or groups across the continent. Her area of research is African philosophy and sexual and reproductive rights with the special focus on maternal mortality.
Elisabeth Ivarsflaten is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. She is the principal investigator of the Digital Social Science Core Facility (DIGSSCORE) and the Norwegian Citizen Panel at the University of Bergen. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, before joining the University of Bergen faculty. Ivarsflaten specializes in the study of public opinion and political parties. Her research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and other peer-reviewed journals. Much of Ivarsflaten research, teaching and writing explores radical extreme right parties and social movements. She has also been engaged for many years in the development and application of innovative survey research. More recently she has been branching out to the field of law and politics. For more information, see her bio and curriculum vitae.
Christine M. Jacobsen is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Bergen. Jacobsen specializes in the areas of migration, religion and gender. Her publications include the monograph Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway (Brill, 2011) as well as articles and book chapters within a range of topics such as feminism and multiculturalism, identity politics and political involvement among youth of immigrant origin, migration and sex work, and religion and secularism. Jacobsen works ethnographically in Norway and Southern France. Her latest book is Eksepsjonell velferd? Irregulære migranter i det norske velferdssamfunnet (Exceptional Welfare: Irregular migrants in the Norwegian welfare state, Gyldendal 2015, co-edited with Bendixsen and Søvig).
Maja Janmyr is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen. Her research interests include issues of international law – in particular socio-legal and critical approaches to international refugee- and human rights law. She is currently (2015-2019) researching refugee rights in the context of Syrian displacement in the Middle East. Her previous research includes rights mobilization among Nubians in Egypt, and readmission agreements and return policies in the European context. Her PhD thesis focused on the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) human rights obligations in refugee camps and avenues for accountability under the international laws of responsibility.
Francesca Refsum Jensenius is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), specializing in comparative politics, comparative political economy and research methods, with a regional focus on South Asia and Latin America. Her main research interest is how electoral dynamics and institutional design affect different types of inequality in society. This she pursues through a multi-method approach, combining large-scale data collection and analysis with extensive field work. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California Berkeley (2013). Previously she studied political science and Hindi at Duke University, Delhi University and the University of Oslo.
Adrian Jjuuko is a Ugandan human rights lawyer and advocate. He is the Executive Director of Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF). He is the current Chair of the Legal Committee and former coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which coordinated civil society efforts to nullify Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act and which won the US State Department’s Human Rights Defenders Award 2011. Adrian coordinated the successful legal efforts to challenge the Anti Homosexuality Act, 2014 in Uganda’s Constitutional Court and is leading the process to challenge the Act at the East African Court of Justice. He holds an LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa from the University of Pretoria, an LLB degree from Makerere University Kampala, Uganda, and a postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law Development Centre, Kampala. His research interests are in the areas of: LGBTI rights, the right to health, and children’s rights.
Emma Lundgren Jörum is a political scientist with a research focus on Middle Eastern borders and migration. She currently works as a coordinator for refugee school children in Uppsala, Sweden. She remains affiliated to the Department of Government, Uppsala University, where she defended her PhD thesis in 2011. Publications include The choice and the Way: an in-depth interview study with recently arrived Syrians in Sweden (Report 2015:8, The Migration Studies Delegation, Ministry of Justice, Stockholm 2015), Repression across Borders: Homeland Response to Anti-regime Mobilisation among Syrians in Sweden (in Diaspora Studies Journal, 2014), and Beyond Syria´s Borders: A History of Territorial Conflicts in the Middle East (I. B. Tauris: London, 2014).
Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo – Born on 3 July 1962 in Blantyre, Malawi, Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo is a Malawian national who has taught at the University of Malawi since 1986. He obtained his LL.B (hons.), LL.M and Ph.D degrees from the Universities of Malawi, Cambridge and East Anglia. He is currently an Associate Professor of Law specializing in constitutional law and legal theory. His research interests focus on the interplay of law and politics, especially in the framework of constitutionalism, democratic governance and development. He has also participated actively in human rights advocacy programmes in southern Africa, including in his capacity as a trustee of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, a member of the Advisory Board of the Africa Programme of Article 19 and a member of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).
Thomas M. Keck is the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law & Politics at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs. He received a B.A. in Politics from Oberlin College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. His research focuses on constitutional courts and the use of legal strategies by political movements on the left and the right. He is the author of The Most Activist Supreme Court in History and Judicial Politics in Polarized Times, along with articles in the American Political Science Review, Constitutional Studies, Law & Society Review, and Law & Social Inquiry. He is currently leading an NSF-funded, cross-national, comparative study of constitutional free expression jurisprudence.
Are John Knudsen is a senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) specialising on post-civil war Lebanon. His research interests include urban refugees, forced migration and communal conflict. He has published articles, special journal issues and edited books on these topics including Palestinian Refugees: Space and Place in the Levant (Routledge, 2011) and Lebanon: After the Cedar Revolution (Hurst, 2012). His current research explores the convergence of the Palestinian and Syrian refugee crises in urban camps and squatters in Beirut, Sidon and Tyre.
Carl Henrik Knutsen (b. 26/03 1981) is Professor in Political Science at the University of Oslo. Knutsen’s research concerns, for example, the economic effects of political institutions, democracy measurement, and the determinants of autocratic breakdown and democratization. His largest current research project involves collecting the Historical Varieties of Democracy dataset, and investigating the effects of different political institutions on economic growth and on redistributive policies. Knutsen’s research has been widely published, including in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics.
Vikram Kolmannskog is interested in human complexity and growth and how we can limit unnecessary suffering. His work is focused on law and society, therapy, and creative writing. He is a lawyer (LL.M. from Oslo and LSE) and a social scientist with a Dr.Philos. in Sociology of Law (Oslo). A main area of work has been to strengthen the rights of people displaced in the context of climate change. Another more recent focus has been LGBT/queer movements and rights, particularly in India. He is also a therapist with a private practice and 50 % Associate Professorship at the Norwegian Gestalt Institute. In addition to scholarly work, he writes some fiction. www.VikramKolmannskog.no.
Iryna Kryvko is a 32-year-old Ukrainian who moved to Norway in January 2014. She as a Bachelor and Master degree in Political Science from Ukraine. Her studies were focused on the areas of politics, sociology, psychology and marketing. While working as an intern for Ukrainian Labour party during Election 2006 Iryna participated in few social research followed by data processing. Since August 2015 I have taken the Master program in Public Administration at UiB. Due to previous background and experience, and additionally to my newly experience as an immigrant, I am interesting in the issues voter mobilisation among immigrants in Norway. My master thesis is devoted to the challenges for democracy that are caused by new multinational society in the Western countries. It is a case-study of voter mobilisation among immigrants on the election in 2015 to the Bergen municipality (Norway) which aims to explore ‘What political parties have done in order to engage in the local politics voters with foreign background and which methods were used for it?’ Telephone: 48 10 18 38.
Anna Maria Lundberg is a senior lecturer in Human Rights at Malmö University, Global Political Studies and a member of Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare. She has a PhD in Ethnicity (Linköping University 2004) and a master degree of Public International Law (Lund University 1999). At present Anna is involved in a five-year project titled “Undocumented children’s rights claims. A multidisciplinary project on agency and contradictions between different levels of regulations and practice that reveals undocumented children’s human rights”. The project is financed by the Swedish Research Council. Anna is involved in the asylum rights movement and relates in her research to the experiences as an activist in Malmö.
Katrine Løken is a Professor of Economics, University of Bergen. Løken’s research agenda has been to utilize rich administrative registry data to evaluate various forms of social policy, especially family policy measures as parental leave, subsidized day care, father’s quota in leave, and cash subsidies for families. The focus is consistently on finding causal effects of policy – for example by using a careful before-after design of families who were and were not affected by policy change. In recent work (as part of a Young Researcher FRIPRO project, financed by the Norwegian Research Council) she studies the causal effect of prison sentences. Løken has for example published in American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy, two of the leading journals in Economics.
Wesley Maraire is an entrepreneur from Zimbabwe. Holds a Masters degree in Labour Law, obtained from the University of Cape Town. He is a research consultant with the Centre for Social Science Research. Previously, a manager and thought leader at Global Consulting & Market Intelligence firm Frost & Sullivan. Wesley has also held Teaching Assistant positions for several senior lecturers at the University of Cape Town. Most recent publication funded by the Mellon Fund focussed on the interface between existing laws and the work environment in the clothing industry. Currently completing a Doctoral proposal focusing on institutionalisation of Appropriate Dispute Resolution mechanisms in the Zimbabwe legal system as a way of extending justice to all, and making court as place of last resort.
Ruben Berge Mathisen has a bachelor’s degree in comparative politics and one year of law at the faculty of law in Bergen. In the fall of 2016, he will start the master’s program in comparative politics in Bergen and work as a research assistant on the project Political Determinants of Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Center on Law and Social Transformation at CMI.
Kristian Mjåland is a Senior Researcher at Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2015. Kristian has been involved in several large research projects, amongst others a study of compulsory care towards drug users, drug use, drug economy and offender rehabilitation in prisons, and an ongoing study of open-air drug markets. Kristian is a qualitative researcher, using primarily ethnographic methods in his work. Theoretically, his research explores issues such as penal/state power, legitimacy and procedural justice. He is currently working on a large ERC funded research project called “Penal Policymaking and the Prisoner Experience: A Comparative Analysis” (2015-2020), led by Dr. Ben Crewe at the University of Cambridge. Kristian’s recent research has appeared in journals such as Punishment & Society and International Journal of Drug Policy.
Alan Msosa is a Commonwealth Scholar and doctoral candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre. He is a Chevening Scholarship alumnus for his MA degree awarded by the same university. Before joining the Human Rights Centre, Alan worked for International IDEA where he was coordinator for Planning and Programming. He was also their diversity coordinator for their African Programme. He has also worked as Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator for ARASA, a regional network of civil society organisations promoting human rights-based approaches to the HIV and AIDS crisis across southern Africa, and is a guest blogger for Outright International. Alan’s PhD research is entitled ‘Sexuality and Human Rights in Malawi’. His research focuses on investigating societal and institutional factors that influence the lack of protection of human rights for LGBT people in Malawi.
Charles Ngwena, LLB, LLM (Wales), LLD (Free State), Barrister-at-Law, is Professor Law in the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He has taught at law schools in the United Kingdom, Swaziland, South Africa, United States and Canada. He has published widely on issues at the intersection between human rights and health care, including HIV/AIDS and reproductive and sexual health with a focus on the African region. He is also a disability rights expert. Prof Ngwena serves on editorial committees and editorial boards of a number of international journals. He is the Convening Editor of the African Disability Rights Yearbook and Section Editor of Developing World Bioethics (for Law and Bioethics). He serves on the editorial boards of Medical Law International and the Journal of African Law. He is co-editor of Employment equity law (with JL Pretorius & E Klink) which was first published in 2001 by Butterworths and is updated annually. With Rebecca Cook, he is co-editor of Health and human rights (Ashgate, 2007). With Ebenezer Durojaye, he is co-editor of Strengthening sexual and reproductive rights in the African region through human rights (Pretoria University Law Press, 2014). He has a forthcoming book – What is Africanness to me?: Contesting Nativism in Race, Culture and Sexualities.
Olga Patricia Velásquez Ocampo is a Ph.D candidate at Los Andes University School of Law, Bogota, Colombia. She holds a Master’s Degree in Law (LLM). She has worked for the Colombian Constitutional Court and as legal advisor to the Ministry of Law & Justice in Colombia. In that position, she contributed to the creation of a gender sensitive policy related to the Colombian criminal policy. Her research interests focus on law and gender, transitional justice from below and constitutional design. She has been a lecturer at Los Andes University and is currently a lecturer at the EAFIT University’s School of Law (Medellin, Colombia).
Colbert Ouma Ojiambo is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, practicing as such in the firm of Ojiambo and Company Advocates, and also a law Lecturer. I hold a Master’s Degree (LL.M, with distinction in dissertation) from the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, and Bachelor of Laws (LL.B), from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Dr. Nicholas Orago is a passionate and committed human rights advocate. His main area of specialty is economic and social rights. Apart from his research exertions, Dr. Orago has worked extensively in the area of human rights, starting as legal and research assistant at the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya); as a research assistant at the Research, Policy and Legislation Department of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights; as a protection assistant at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); and as a gender based violence field advisor at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Dr. Orago is currently a lecturer at the School of Law, the University of Nairobi. His areas of research include constitutional interpretation, comparative constitutional law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law and gender equality.
Theodoros Rakopoulos currently works as Research Fellow at the Egalitarianism ERC programme, University of Bergen. He has a PhD from Goldsmiths and has previously worked as Research Fellow at the Human Economy Programme (University of Pretoria). He has conducted long-term fieldwork in rural Sicily and urban Greece in research supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His interests include food sovereignty and activism, solidarity, mafia and antimafia, land administration, labour and cooperatives. His publications include articles in anthropological and regional journals (including Focaal, Social Analysis, Dialectical Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology and Social Anthropology, as well as the Journal of Modern Italian Studies and the Journal of Modern Greek Studies). His monograph (From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily) as well as an edited volume (The Global Life of Austerity) will be published in early 2017, both by Berghahn.
Carmeliza Rosário is currently a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. She has a Master of Philosophy in Development Anthropology from the same university. Her research region is Mozambique and her areas of interest include poverty and inequality, health, reproductive rights, women and vulnerable group’s rights. She is part of the research team on the projects on Sexual & Reproductive Rights Lawfare & Political determinants of sexual and reproductive health.
Mindy Jane Roseman is Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights, as well as the Director of International Law Programs at Yale Law School. She was the Academic Director of the Human Rights Program and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Before joining HRP, Roseman was an Instructor in the Department of Population and International Health at Harvard School of Public Health Roseman researched and reported on a range of health and human rights issues, with special focus on reproductive and sexual rights, including HIV and AIDS, and women’s and children’s rights. Before coming to Harvard she had been a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, in charge of its East and Central European program. She also holds a J.D. from Northwestern Law School and a Ph.D. in Modern European History, with a focus on the history of reproductive health, from Columbia University. Her publications include Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward (Laura Reichenbach, co-editor),Interrogations, Forced Feedings and the Role of Health Professionals (co-edited with Ryan Goodman, Harvard University Press 2009) and Women of the World (East Central Europe): Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives (CRLP, 2000).
Sofie Schütte leads U4’s thematic work on the Justice Sector and Anti-Corruption Agencies. From 2004 to 2008 she worked as an advisor for the Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia (United Nations Development Program) and as an integrated expert for the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission in Jakarta. Her short-term country work experiences include Afghanistan, Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Kenya, Kosovo, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. She holds a Master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies, Business & Economics, and Sociology from the University of Passau, Germany. In 2012, Sofie Schütte completed her PhD on the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission at the University of Melbourne.
Chrispine Gwalawala Sibande is a Malawian Human Rights Lawyer who specialized in Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights. He holds Masters in Law (LLM) in Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights from University of Free State, South Africa and Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from University of Malawi. He is currently the Country Director of Ipas Malawi and the National Coordinator of the Coalition for the Prevention of Unsafe Abortion (COPUA) in Malawi. Chrispine’s work focusses on sexual and reproductive health rights issues in Malawi and Southern Africa Development Countries (SADC) in areas of human rights and access to safe abortion, human rights and sexual orientation and gender identity, human rights and sex work and human rights and HIV and AIDS. He is currently leading a network of public institutions and civil society organizations working together to reform abortion laws in Malawi. He is a member of several advisory public bodies and civil society organizations in Malawi as an expert on human rights with a focus on sexual and reproductive health rights.
Ferdinando Sigona is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Institute of Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include: statelessness, diasporas and the state; Romani politics and anti-Gypsyism; ‘illegality’ and the everyday experiences of undocumented migrant children and young people; and crisis, governance and governmentality of forced migration in the EU. His work has appeared in a range of international academic journals, including Sociology, Social Anthropology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Identities, Citizenship Studies and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is author or editor of books and journal’s special issues including The Oxford Handbook on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (with Fiddian Qasmiyeh, Loescher and Long, 2014), Sans Papiers. The social and economic lives of undocumented migrants (with Bloch and Zetter, 2014) and Diasporas Reimagined (with Gamlen, Liberatore and Neveu Kringelbach, 2015). Nando is also Associate Editor of the journal Migration Studies.
Elin Skaar is a senior researcher and head of the research cluster on Rights and Legal Institutions at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway. Research interests lie in the intersection between law and politics and include human rights, transitional justice, and judicial reform. Publications include Judicial Independence and Human Rights in Latin America: Violations, Politics, and Prosecution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); After Violence: Transitional Justice, Peace, and Democracy (Routledge, 2015, co-authored); and Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road from Impunity towards Accountability (Routledge, 2016, co-edited). Skaar holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Professor Marit Skivenes has a PhD in political science and is a faculty at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway. Skivenes is the PI of several international research projects on child protection system, including Norway, Finland, England and the U.S. Skivenes has written numerous scientific works on child protection decision making, children´s rights, migrant children, and child welfare system and broader welfare issues, as well as the impact of communication and publicity in theory and practice. Her work has been published in Journal of Children´s Rights; Child and Family Social work; Human Relations; International Social work; Acta Sociological, to mention some. She has published two books on whistle blowing, and co-edited three books on Oxford University Press with a comparative focus on child welfare systems (2011); child welfare and migrants (2015), and; the role of courts in child protection decision-making (2016).
Jeroen P. van der Sluijs is professor in Theory of Science & Ethics of the Natural Sciences at the University of Bergen and associate professor in new and emerging risks at Utrecht University. His research focusses on scientific controversy on environmental and health risks in situations where scientific assessment is used as a basis for policymaking before conclusive scientific evidence is available on the causal relationships, the magnitude, and the probabilities of these risks. His work seeks to understand and improve the science-policy interface in a context of deep uncertainty by contributing and applying deliberative methods and tools for knowledge quality assessment. He has been working on contested science in the fields of climate change, pollinator decline, fish stock assessments, endocrine disruptors, electromagnetic fields, ultra fine particles and risk migration in sustainable technologies. Jeroen has published more than 70 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals and more than 25 book chapters.
Ayo Sogunro is a Nigerian writer, social critic and lawyer. He is the author of The Wonderful Life of Senator Boniface and other Sorry Tales and, most recently, the collection of essays: Everything in Nigeria is Going to Kill You. His writings have earned references and publication in international and Nigerian media. He currently serves as Senior Legal Advisor at The Initiative for Equal Rights, a Lagos-based sexual and health rights NGO with focus on the protection of LGBT rights in Nigeria and West Africa.
Ingrid Solheim, alongside her medical studies, is a Research Track student at the Department for Global Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen. Her research field is in sexual and reproductive health, and more specifically access to safe abortion in illegal settings. She is currently performing a qualitative study about medical abortion among young women in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. She’s also an activist in the field of gender equality, access to medicines and
medical services.
Espen Stokke has earned a Bachelor degree in Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. In the Spring of 2013, he attended the Foreign Policy courses in the Washington Semester Program at American University where he developed an earnest interest in the plight of the Syrians. Currently, he is finishing his Masters in Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen with a research focus on the Syrian diaspora. He is also a research student at the Christians Michelsen Institute. Spring of 2015 and 2016, he worked as an Educational Assistant in the Political Mobilization course at his university and has taken summer courses at SOAS, University of London, in beginner’s Arabic and in Government and Politics of the Middle East. These experiences put together helped guide him in his research endeavor about the Syrian diasporic mobilization in the US and the UK, which is the topic for his current Master’s thesis. As for his Bachelor’s paper, he compared the Muslim Brotherhood insurgency in 1979-1982 with the Syrian uprising of 2011. He is also interested in expanding his knowledge on governance, conflict and security, and the Middle East.
Hugo Stokke is a political scientist focusing on human rights research. His interests include: international labour standards, multinatinational corporations, affirmative action and ethnic discrimination, child labour and human rights monitoring, as well as the theoretical foundation of human rights. He has worked extensively in the Asian region, covering a number of countries both in South and Southeast Asia. He worked for three years as an Associate Expert with the ILO in the Asian region and has been on regular missions to the region since then. He is currently engaged in work on international organisation with a focus on the ILO, human rights obligations of private enterprise and affirmative action as a means of responding to structural discrimination among groups in society. He was the editor of three volumes of the Human Rights in Development Yearbook series (1997 – 2000). Current research interest is on rights and legal institutions.
Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde (1972) received his doctoral degree in 2007, and became professor in Legal History the same year at the Faculty of Law at the University in Bergen. He has published Speculum legale in 2005, Den juridiske komedien (The Legal Comedy) in 2007 and Høgsteretts historie 1965-2015 (The History of the Norwegian Supreme Court 1965-2015) in 2015. He has also edited Rettstekstar i mellomalderen (Legal Texts in the Middle Ages) in 2006, Dekalogen in 2008, Rendezvous of European Legal Cultures in 2010, and Constitutionalism before 1789 in 2014.
Andrea Süssmann is Master of Law (2010) from University of Bergen. She is currently working on her PhD thesis on the right of equal access to health care services to irregular migrants under international and European human rights law.
Hilde Svrljuga Sætre is writing her master thesis on the Committe of the Cinvention of the Child and its relationship to NGOs, at the Departement of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen. Hilde works as a student assistant at the Norwegian Centre for Research Data and as a seminar teatcher at the University. She is also a member of the Rafto Founation’s student group.
Kavita Navlani Søreide is a Political Scientist with a current focus on the Environmental Law and Land Rights in India’s Asymmetric Federal System. She holds a PhD in Federal Coalition Politics of India from the University of Delhi. She is interested in tracing the efficacy of environmental law against the backdrop of changing land and property rights in the tribal hill states of North East India under the special provisions of the sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. Her wider research inclinations lie in studying the difference in administrative, political and policy responses of different Indian states in the federation to the post economics reforms period. Kavita has also worked earlier as a private consultant for UNICEF Pulse Polio India Program and for Pathfinder International‘s Sexual Health of Adolescents in the Urban Slums of Delhi project.
Dr. juris Karl Harald Søvig is professor of law at the faculty of law, University of Bergen, where he is leader of the PhD program and chairing the research group on administrative law. He has previously worked as a temporary judge at the district and high court and as ad hoc chairman of the county board. His research has focused on different forms of coercive measures within the welfare state, as well as rights of the children. He has authored a report for the government on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into the Norwegian legal system and chaired an expert committee drafting a new act on adoption (NOU 2014:9). His most recent project was PROVIR (Provision of welfare to irregular migrants) funded by the Norwegian research council. He is vice chair of the European Association of Health Law.
Catalina Vallejo is a Lawyer from Colombia. Has specialized in Administrative Law and holds a Master degree in Peace Studies, which she obtained from Innsbruck University in Austria. Has worked for the Colombian public sector in projects related to land management, urban planning and human rights. Has collaborated with the Chr. Michelsen Institute in various research projects with regional focus on Latin America, including studies on Transitional Justice, Civilian-Military Relationships, and Climate Change Law-fare. She is currently a PhD candidate at Los Andes University School of Law in Bogota and affiliate researcher of the Centre on Law & Social Transformation in Bergen, where she is investigating how the law is dealing with the global climate crisis from two standpoints: litigation and governance.
Vegard Vibe is a PhD candidate at the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen, where he also received his master’s degree in 2011 and worked for almost two years as a research assistant. His research interests include SRR-lawfare, the global development of LGBT-rights and LGBT-social movements, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently constructing a global database on sexual and reproductive rights court cases. Vibe has previously studied at the Institute of Political Science in Bordeaux, and worked in a women’s health rights organization in Accra, Ghana.
Dr Namita Wahi is a Fellow at CPR and Director of the Land Rights Initiative. The Initiative is mapping the state’s relationship to land in India, and seeks to inform the public and policy discourse on land conflict issues, especially for the most marginalised communities. Namita holds a doctoral degree from Harvard Law School (SJD’ 14) where she wrote her dissertation on “The Right to Property and Economic Development in India”. Namita’s research interests are broadly in the areas of property rights, social and economic rights, and eminent domain law, and she has taught course in these areas at Harvard University and NUJS, Kolkata. Namita has written extensively on these issues in academic journals and edited volumes, as well as newspapers and magazines, and has spoken about these issues on prime time television. Previously, Namita worked as a litigator at Davis Polk and Wardwell, a prominent New York city law firm, where she practised primarily in the areas of bankruptcy, securities, refugee and criminal defence law. Namita also holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School (2005), where she was an Inlaks scholar and was awarded the Laylin prize, and B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degrees from National Law School, Bangalore (2004), where she graduated first in her class.
Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of Health and Human Rights Initiatives at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Yamin is also an Adjunct Lecturer on Law and Global Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a Global Fellow at the Centre for Law and Social Transformation in Norway, and was selected as the 2015-16 Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights, University of Connecticut. Before joining Georgetown’s faculty this year, Yamin was at Harvard University, where she directed the JD/MPH Program and serving as Policy Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center on Health and Human Rights. From 2007 to 2011, Yamin held the prestigious Joseph H. Flom Fellowship. Yamin was a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Economic and Social Rights for 15 years (Chair 2009-2015; Vice-Chair 2001-2008). Yamin has published multiple books and edited volumes, as well as over 80 scholarly articles. In 2016, Yamin was appointed by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General to the Independent Accountability Panel (EWEC), on which she currently serves. She is also a commissioner on the Lancet-O’Neill Institute Commission on Global Health and the Law. She has previously served on the Expert Group to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Task Force on ‘Making Fair Choices Toward UHC’, and WHO’s steering committee for the research project, ‘Evidence of Impacts of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s and Children’s Health’. Yamin has contributed to and consulted on the drafting of multiple General Comments by UN treaty bodies, as well as UN Human Rights Council resolutions. She has also participated in and advised on landmark litigation relating to ESC rights, and in particular health- and sexual and reproductive rights, in multiple countries and regions, as well as to supra-national adjudicative bodies. Yamin was the only non-national appointed by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of its 2008 decision, T 760/08, calling for restructuring the country’s health system, and similarly by Kenya’s Constitutional Implementation Commission to the Oversight Committee for its work on the right to health.
Mulumebet Zenebe is assistant professor at Center for Gender Studies, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. She is involved in the NRC-NORGLOBAL research project, “Competing discourses impacting girls’ and women’s rights: Fertility control and safe abortion in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia”. The three-year project (2016-2018) located at the Centre for International Health, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, examines global and national policy discourses surrounding fertility control and abortion, and local practices and moralities related to these issues among adolescents in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia. The title of Mulumebet’s postdoctoral research project is “University students negotiating competing discourses of sexuality, Fertility control and abortion in Ethiopia”. The project will look at the dominant discourses of sexuality, fertility control and abortion that university students in Ethiopia encounter. It will attempt to assess how students negotiate with these discourses to make decisions on their sexual and reproductive health practices. How gender intersects with the dominant discourses of sexuality and reproductive health is another area that her research tries to address. She is also interested to investigate female students’ resistances to silences and taboos about sexuality.
