About Us
Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University and Programme Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. He has previously worked as Legal Officer in Chambers of the International Criminal Court (ICC) (2003-2008), as Reader in Public International Law and International Criminal Justice at Swansea University (2007-2008) and as Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (2000-2003). He obtained his PhD degree (summa cum laude) from Humboldt University Berlin after completing his First and Second State Exam in Law in Germany. He holds LL.M. degrees from New York University and Cologne - Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Alex Whiting is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School where he teaches, writes and consults on domestic and international criminal prosecution issues. Previously, he worked for 18 years as a U.S. and international prosecutor. From 2010 until 2013, he was in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague where he served first as the Investigations Coordinator, overseeing all of the investigations in the office, and then as Prosecutions Coordinator, overseeing all of the office’s ongoing prosecutions. Before going to the ICC, Whiting taught for more than three years as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, again with a focus on prosecution subjects. From 2002-2007, he was a Trial Attorney and then a Senior Trial Attorney with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was lead prosecution counsel in Prosecutor v. Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu, and Haradin Bala; Prosecutor v. Milan Martić; and Prosecutor v. Dragomir Milošević. Before going to the ICTY, he was a U.S. federal prosecutor for ten years, first with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., and then with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston where he focused on organized crime and corruption cases. Whiting attended Yale College and Yale Law School, and clerked for Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of the Eastern District of New York. His publications include Dynamic Investigative Practice at the International Criminal Court, 76 Law and Contemporary Problems 163 (2014), INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW: CASES AND COMMENTARY (2011), co-authored with Antonio Cassese and two other authors, and In International Criminal Prosecutions, Justice Delayed Can Be Justice Delivered, 50 Harv. Int’l L. J. 323 (2009).
Phil Clark is a Reader in Comparative and International Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He was previously the co-founder and convenor of Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) at the University of Oxford. He specialises in conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa, particularly questions of peace, justice, truth, reconciliation and forgiveness. His latest book is the The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice without Lawyers (Cambridge University Press) and he is currently finishing a book on the politics of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Clark also directs the Aegis Trust research, policy and higher education programme in Rwanda, funded by the UK Department for International Development. He holds a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Christian De Vos is an advocacy officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative. Based in the London office, he engages in advocacy across the Justice Initiative’s areas of work, with a particular focus on national-level implementation of human rights judgments. De Vos has worked for organizations including Amnesty International, the Human Sciences Research Council, the United States Institute of Peace, and the War Crimes Research Office. He previously served as a law clerk with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s Office of Legal Affairs and, before joining the Justice Initiative, he was a PhD researcher at Leiden University’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, where he taught and conducted research in the areas of international criminal law and transitional justice. He is currently completing his PhD at Leiden as part of the NWO-funded research project 'Post-Conflict Justice.' As a consultant for the Open Society Justice Initiative, De Vos co-authored From Judgment to Justice, a report on the implementation of human rights judgments, as well as a companion report, From Rights to Remedies. His work has also appeared in the Leiden Journal of International Law, the Melbourne Journal of International Law, the Human Rights Brief, and Politkon: South African Journal of Legal Studies. A member of the New York bar and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, De Vos received his JD from the American University Washington College of Law.
Chandra Lekha Sriram is Professor of International Law and International Relations, and co-Director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, at the University of East London (www.uel.ac.uk/chrc). She has published widely on human rights, conflict prevention and peace building, international law and international politics, and post-atrocity justice and international criminal justice. Recent publications include War, Conflict and Human Rights, co-authored with Olga Martin-Ortega and Johanna Herman (2d edition, Routledge) and Transitional justice and peacebuilding on the ground: Victims and excombatants, co-edited with Jemima Garcia-Godos, Johanna Herman and Olga Martin-Ortega (2013). She is co-editor of the book series Law, Conflict and International Relations at Routledge (http://www.routledge.com/books/series/LCIR/) and is co-chair of the London Transitional Justice Network (www.londontjnetwork.org). She is also chair of the International Studies Association Human Rights Section (http://www.isanet.org/ISA/Sections/HR). Her current research projects include a large ESRC/NWO project on the Impact of Transitional Justice Measures on Democratic Institution-building (www.tjdi.org), and collaborative projects with colleagues at the US International University in Nairobi, the London School of Economics, and University of London, SOAS, on civil society promotion of accountability in the context of the scrutiny of internationalised criminal tribunals. She received her PhD in Politics from Princeton University in 2000, and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994.
Marieke Wierda is a Dutch lawyer, born and raised in Yemen and educated in the UK and the US, and specialized in transitional justice. Ms. Wierda has 16 years experience in transitional justice, starting with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1997-2000), and then joining the International Center for Transitional Justice where she worked for a decade (2001-2011). She worked extensively on transitional justice in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. From 2007 she was appointed Criminal Justice Director and was based in Beirut (2007-2009) and Kabul (2009-2010). In 2011, she was an advisor to a UN Panel of Experts appointed by the Secretary General to advise on accountability for the final phases of the conflict in Sri Lanka. In October 2011, after the Revolution in Libya she joined the United Nations Support Mission (UNSMIL) as the Transitional Justice Advisor. She is the author of many book chapters and articles on international criminal law and transitional justice, including a book on International Criminal Evidence, co-authored with Judge Richard May. Currently, she is working on her PhD with Dr. Carsten Stahn, on the Impact of the International Criminal Court in Situation Countries, including Uganda, Libya, Afghanistan and Colombia.
Mark Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the University's Transnational Law Institute. He has held visiting appointments on the law faculties of Oxford University (University College), Université de Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), Vanderbilt University, University of Ottawa, Trinity College-Dublin, University of Western Ontario, and University of Illinois College of Law. In 2010, Professor Drumbl was appointed Visiting Scholar and Senior Fellow, at the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Law; Visiting Professor, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics (Charles Sturt University/Australian National University) and Parsons Visitor, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney; 2014 – Visiting International Senior Fellow, Monash University, School of Law, Melbourne (Australia). Professor Drumbl's research and teaching interests include public international law, global environmental governance, international criminal law, post-conflict justice, and transnational legal process. His work has been relied upon by the Supreme Court of Canada, the United Kingdom High Court, United States Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of New York in recent decisions.
Dr. Sara Kendall is a lecturer (assistant professor) at the University of Kent, where she teaches international law and co-directs the Centre for Critical International Law. She is also an associated researcher at the Vrije Universiteit's Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law. She completed her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley's interdisciplinary Rhetoric department with training from Berkeley Law School's Center for the Study of Law and Society. She has a decade of experience researching the contextual aspects of international criminal law interventions, with a focus on the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court. At Leiden University she participated in the four-year NWO-funded research project 'Post-Conflict Justice', focusing on the role of the ICC in Kenya and Uganda, which she is currently developing into a book. She has published on victim participation at the ICC, the political economy of international criminal law, domestic political effects of the ICC in Kenya, and legal 'hybridity' at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Her work has appeared in the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the Leiden Journal of International Law, Law and Contemporary Problems, and Law, Culture and the Humanities. An edited volume, entitled Contested Justice: the Politics and Practice of International Criminal Court Interventions (co-edited with Christian De Vos and Carsten Stahn), is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.