Fellows

The IDCR is pleased to establish Visiting Fellows whose academic and practical work further the goals and values of the Institute. Fellows receive official recognition from the University of Essex and have privileged access to services and activities.

Dr Patrick Ball

Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) at the Benetech Initiative in Palo Alto, California, United States. Dr Ball is a world leading expert in the measurement and analysis of gross human rights violations. Along with Herbert Spirer and in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr Ball developed an innovative and powerful system for measuring and analysing gross human rights violations that has been adopted by numerous truth commisisons around the world, such as those held in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, South Africa, Peru, Sierra Leone and East Timor. He has testified against Slobodan Milošević at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

In April 2010 Dr Ball gave a three-hour seminar on the challenges of data analysis in the field of human rights as part of the schdule of events organised by the Essex Transitional Justice Network. He also supervised and mentored Essex graduate Anita Gohdes (MSc Human Rights and Social Science Methods 2009) at Benetech.

Judith Large

Honourary Research Fellow at the Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Studies, Lancaster University (UK) and Special Advisor to Berghof Peace Support in Berlin (BPS) , Germany. Currently Director of Secretariat for the Non-Official Friends of Sri Lanka, Judith is involved in discreet non-official diplomacy in South Asia (details on request). She also retains an ongoing commitment (research and practice) in Sudan.

Previously Judith served as Director of Programme for Conflict Resolution for the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI, Office of Martti Ahtisaari, Helsinki and Brussels) from 2006-2007, before returning to more process and field-based work in conflict analysis and response, with particular focus on effective governance and peacebuilding strategies. Under the German Presidency of the EU she was closely involved in the Nuremburg Conference and subsequent publication on transitional justice (see below, publications). She served three years as Senior Advisor for Democracy Building and Conflict Management at International IDEA (2003-2006), an inter-governmental organization based in Sweden with regional offices in Latin America, southern Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Caucasus, and was Acting Head of the thematic unit working on conflict issues.

Dr Marco Larizza

Member of the World Bank’s Young Professionals Programme in Public Sector Reform and Governance, Africa Region. Before moving to the World Bank, Dr Larizza was employed by GTZ in Zambia to work on development programming. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Government in 2008 at Essex and his work is on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of democracy with a particular focus on Latin America. He is author of UN TRIANGOLO DIPLOMATICO. Il ruolo degli Stati Uniti nelle relazioni tra Italia e Venezuela (1943-1948) (Roma: Carocci) and ‘‘Inequality and Human Rights: Who Controls What When and How’, International Studies Quarterly; as well as forthcoming articles and chapters on governance in developing countries.

Dr Neophytos Loizides

Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queen’s University, Belfast and Associate Editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Before moving to Belfast, Dr Loizides has held fellowships at the Belfer Centre at Harvard and the Solomon Asch Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on conflict resolution models for deeply divided societies particularly power-sharing and federal arrangements, negotiating ‘settler’ vs. ‘indigenous’ people conflicts and ratification processes in peace settlements. His most recent publications include articles published or forthcoming in Journal of Peace Research, Human Rights Quarterly, Nations and Nationalism, Cooperation and Conflict, Middle Eastern Studies and Parliamentary Affairs.

Tom Thomas, OBE

Tom is a widely experienced mediator who has been involved in conflict and dispute resolution in one form or another for most of his working life. His experience includes working at community interfaces during peacekeeping operations in the Armed Forces, high-level diplomatic negotiations in NATO, policy development and budgetary management in Whitehall, and ten years of business negotiations in the City. He has carried out mediation across a significant number of areas, including large business consortia, the delovery of ‘joined up’ public services, national defence, and international security. In addition to being a fully qualified and accredited mediator, Tom is also Director of his own business consultancy, Ideas to Delivery Consulting Limited (i2dc Ltd). He is working with the IDCR as part of its mediation programme, and he works with other units at the University of Essex.

Jonathan Crook

Jonathan is Co-Founder of commercial entity, Cyberalpha; a company that produces technology solutions for information management, analysis and visualisation in the areas of human rights, corporate social responsibility, security, stability and counter-terrorism. Before establishing this company, Jonathan was a British Army Officer and served on operations in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He concluded his military career running a Counter-Terrorist Project at the UK Ministry of Defence. He is a graduate of Lancaster University (BA Hons, International Relations and Strategic Studies), the University of Madras, India (MA Defence and Strategic Studies) and the University of Leicester (MSc Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management). He also Co-Founded a charity in Afghanistan in 2002 ultimately delivering three reconditioned ambulances to the Ministry of Public Health and raised £10,000 that was spent on providing educational equipment to schools in Kabul.

Dr Mary McAuley

Dr. Mary McAuley (M.A., D. Phil. Oxon) left an academic career, as Fellow in Politics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, in 1995 to join the Ford Foundation. Her previous positions included posts at Essex University, visiting professorships at the universities of Wisconsin (Madison) and California (Berkeley), and a British Academy Research Readership. In 1996 she opened the Ford Foundation’s Moscow Office, with responsibility for developing the Foundation’s grant-making programme throughout Russia, a programme which included human rights and legal reform, civil society and local governance, higher education, culture and media. In May 2002 she left the Foundation to return to London, where, as an Associate of the International Centre for Prison Studies, (then at King’s College, London, now in partnership with the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex) she pursued interests in the reform of juvenile justice. At present she is working on a study of the Russian human rights community 1991-2011. Recent publications include: Soviet Politics 1917-1991, Oxford University Press, 1992, Russia’s Politics of Uncertainty, Cambridge University Press, 1997, Deti v tiurmye [Children in Prison], Moscow, OGI, 2008 and Children in Custody: Anglo-Russian Perspectives, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010.

Jo Berry

Jo Berry is the daughter of Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry who was killed in the 1984 Brighton IRA bombing. She has since worked with the IRA bomber Pat Magee on conflict resolution. Her life has been dedicated to the pursuit of human understanding and radical listening, from her studies of Mahatma Ghandi and meditation in India, through to working as one of the first parent facilitators. She is qualified in mediation skills, difficult dialogue and story-telling as metaphor for change. She has worked for over 10 years to communicate the importance of understanding the roots of violence and using empathy in dialogue and how reconciliation can happen after violence. She has spoken with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forgiveness Project), the All Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues, Combatants for Peace, The Basque movement and campaigned against the death penalty. And in 2009 Jo launched the charity Building Bridges for Peace. She is committed to see the humanity in everyone and understand the roots of violence. She now works with prisons, schools, universities and organisations helping individuals and teams recognise the power of radical listening, finding alternatives to blame and find the courage to transform their lives. She has spoken on her own over 50 times in the last 8 years in schools, prisons, Universities, Peace one Day, Ashridge Business school and facilitated workshops in Making peace with the Enemy, Jo has been working with Pat Magee for the last 11 years, demonstrating how empathy can disarm and it is possible to listen and understand even when there are differences of opinion. Their unusual relationship has been told in the BBC documentary “Facing the Enemy”, was featured in the film “Soldiers of Peace” and inspired “The Bomb” a play by Kevin Dyer.

Benedetta Lacey

Benedetta Lacey is a business and human rights expert, and also a freelance anti-corruption and integrity investigator for the United Nations. Benedetta is the former Special advisor on corporate accountability to Amnesty International, where she engaged with governments, corporations and civil society on a range of issues including internet censorship, state contracting of private military and security companies, the environmental and health impacts associated with toxic waste and the extractive sectors, migrant workers and labour standards in global supply chains. Previously, Benedetta worked as an adviser on a number of democracy and accountability questions; this included providing advice to an All Party Parliamentary Group on the applicability of the OECD Guidelines to the operations of companies in weak governance and conflict zones. In 2005 she was awarded a fellowship by the American Society of International Law to investigate the accountability of the UN and implementing partners in refugee camps. She has also worked on civil group actions brought by claimants for alleged human rights harms overseas. Benedetta trained as a barrister in the UK Government’s Cabinet Office advisory team and is a Lord Denning Scholar of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. Benedetta sits on the board of the Peel Institute. In 2011 she was named as one of the US Diplomatic Courier Magazine’s Most Influential Foreign Policy Leaders under 33.

Anthony Southern

Anthony Southern is Retired Chief Superintendent of Cambridgeshire Police and LLM Graduate in Human Rights from the University of Essex. He provided training on the Essex Country Council-IDCR joint programme on UK legal instiutions for the Jiangsu Law Commission and will be useful for future engagements. He is a highly trained and experienced police investigator and operations commander and one of the few senior UK police detectives selected and trained to lead investigations of shootings by security services and complex, high-profile, multi-jurisdiction investigations (e.g. serial murders and series serious sexual offences). He is experienced as a trainer, mentor and advisor. He was recently trained by the U.K government for international development of Security and Justice.

Pilar Domingo

Pilar Domingo has served as external examiner for PhDs in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. After a career in academia, she is now based at the Overseas Development Institute, which is a policy think tank working on all issues relating to development. Her particualr expertise is in rule of law and governance, justice sector reform, accountability and state-building, citizenship rights and legal mobilization, human rights and development, democratization, transitional justice mechanisms, state-building in fragile states, Latin American politics. And she has special expertise on Bolivian politics.