Promoting Changes in Times of Transition and Crisis: Reflections on Human Rights Education

Professor Hommelhoff is a former Rector of the Ruprecht Karis University (Heidelberg) and Professor of Law; specialises in legal aspects of trade and international cooperation. Professor Hommelhoff holds Doctorate Honoris Causa of the Jagiellonian University for initiating the School of the German Law at the Jagiellonian University, and Leo Baeck Award for support to the College of Jewish Studies in Heidelberg.

Jonathan Webber is a British social anthropologist now living in Krakow, where he is a professor at the Institute of European Studies at the Jagiellonian University. He previously taught for twenty years at the University of Oxford and then for eight years as the UNESCO Chair in Jewish and Interfaith Studies at the University of Birmingham, from which he retired in 2010. His publications have focused on modern Jewish culture and society, Holocaust studies, and Polish-Jewish studies; he has held visiting fellowships in Australia, France, Germany, Hungary, and the USA, and has given invited lectures at forty academic institutions worldwide. He was a founder member of the Polish government’s International Auschwitz Council advising the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and served on that Council for twenty-three years (1990-2012). In 1999 he was awarded the Gold Cross of Poland’s Order of Merit for services to Polish-Jewish dialogue.

Dr. Rowland Brucken is an Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History and Political Science Department at Norwich University. His forthcoming book, entitled A Most Uncertain Crusade: The United States, the United Nations, and Human Rights, 1941-1953, is to be published by Northern Illinois University Press. He has taught undergraduate classes on Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses, Genocide in History, and American Civil Rights Movements. At the graduate level, he created and regularly teaches an on-line seminar, “Human Rights and Conflict,” for students pursuing a Master of Diplomacy degree from Norwich. He is also the Zimbabwe Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), which involves daily human rights monitoring, publicizing AI reports and press releases, and testifying on behalf of asylum seekers in immigration court. He has won two national awards from AIUSA for his asylum advocacy.

Dr. Reinhild Otte has a background in economics, law and social sciences. She has professional experience in industry in Germany and abroad, in vocational training, as well as in university teaching and research (economics, law, education). For 25 years she worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in the German Land of Baden-Württemberg. She has also represented the Federal Republic of Germany in numerous international bodies and committees. Since the 1980s, she has contributed to various Council of Europe (CoE) inter-governmental co-operation programmes. Reinhild Otte is a CoE Expert in Education for Democracy and Human Rights; she was awarded the “Pro Merito Medal” of the CoE.

Laura Koba (PhD) is a staff member of Children’s Ombudsman Office in Poland. For a few months, she was also a member of the Board at the La Strada Foundation in Warsaw. Earlier, for sixteen years, she worked as a programme coordinator in so called Human Rights School, and was a staff member of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw. For twenty five years she intensively lectured on human rights in Poland as well as in Lithuania. Her main fields of interests are individual rights and liberties, human rights education, combating trafficking in human beings, combating child prostitution and child pornography and human rights in international relations.

Haneen Abudayeh is an Assistant Professor at the French Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan, since 2011. She graduated from Caen University in Caen, France, where she received her PhD after being awarded a scholarship from the University of Jordan. She graduated with honours when obtaining both her Ph.D. and BA degrees. She speaks and writes French, English, Greek, Spanish, and Arabic.

Saad Abudayeh is a Professor and ex-Chairman of the Political Science Department, Jordan University, Amman, Jordan. In the Jordanian Foreign Service, served as diplomat inside and outside Jordan. He was a visiting professor in Nagoya University, in Nagoya, Japan, and Middle East Centre, St. Anthony College, Oxford, England. Author of 37 books and more than 40 papers about Jordanian and Arab issues. He was awarded a Medal of the Independence by King Abdullah II of Jordan. In 2011, he was awarded by the University of Jordan the Prize of the best researcher. He has a prize in his name, which is granted every year to the student who scores the highest grade in Political Science in BA Degree at the University of Jordan.

Andrzej Szahaj is a Professor of Philosophy, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He was a visiting scholar at universities in Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, St. Andrews, Charlottesville, Berkeley, and Stanford, as well as at Bellagio Rockefeller Center. He published many books and articles on modern philosophy, among others on the Frankfurt School, the neopragmatism of Richard Rorty, the debate between liberals and communitarians, multiculturalism, theories of interpretation and postmodernism, and philosophy of culture.

Özge Yücel Dericiler was born in Ankara in 1977. After graduating from Ankara University, Faculty of Law in 1998, she practiced law in the Ankara Bar Association as an apprentice and got her licence in 1999. She also worked for the Human Rights Commission of the Bar Association. She has an MA degree on Political Science (2003) and Ph.D. on Public Law (2010) from Ankara University, Institute for Social Sciences. She has been granted a scholarship by the Swedish Institute in the field of Human Rights and made a doctoral research during the years 2005 and 2006 at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden. Currently, she is working at the Centre for Research and Application of Human Rights at Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her main research interests are public law, human rights (especially economic, social and cultural rights, women’s human rights and gender studies, children’s rights) and political theory.

Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM is Director, Equity and Diversity at the University of Western Sydney and Adjunct Professor in the Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University. Sev is also President of the Australian Council for Human Rights Education. Dr Ozdowski worked for the Australian government (1980-96) where he played a major role in the advancement of multicultural and human rights policies and institutions. He also headed the Office of Multicultural and International Affairs in South Australia (1996- 2000). As the Human Rights Commissioner (2000-05) he conducted the ground-breaking National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention ‘A last resort?’ and the National Inquiry into Mental Health Services ‘Not for Service’. Dr Ozdowski has an LLM and MA in Sociology degrees from Poland and a PhD from the University of New England. As a Harkness Fellow, Sev spent 1984-86 on research at Harvard, Georgetown and the University of California. Sev’s life-long commitment to multiculturalism and human rights was recognised among others by an Order of Australia Medal, Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and an honorary doctorate from RMIT University in Melbourne.

Dr Tiffany Jones is a lecturer, researcher and published author at UNE, Australia. She liaises on issues of policy development and homophobia with several Australian state government and non-government organisations, and international organisations such as UNESCO. She has studied the impacts of education policies for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and otherwise questioning students. She received the Griffith University Medal for her research and an Association for Women Educators’ Award for her teaching.

Doctor Cornides works as a trade negotiator for the European Commission, specializing in IPR and public procurement (previously worked for the European Commission’s GD for Health and Consumer Protection). He is the author of publications on public and private law, including human rights. He was invited to the conference in his personal capacity; his contributions to the discussion therefore represented his own views and can in no wa y be attributed to the institution in which he is employed.

Msgr Mazurkiewicz was the General Secretary of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community. He is a Professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw and Lecturer at the Papal Department of Theology in Warsaw. Msgr Mazurkiewicz authored many publications concerning European studies, political philosophy, Catholic social teaching, social and political ethics.

Lawyer and former Law Lecturer at diverse universities, namely the University of Lisbon, with a number of scientific papers published. Former legal consultant to the Portuguese Government for the field of Bioethics and former member of the Portuguese National Council on Bioethics. Sciences. Since 2009 has been legal advisor for Health, Research and Bioethics for COMECE (Commission of the Bishops Conferences of the European Union).

Assistant Professor of American Studies, lawyer and political scientist, interested in the analysis of the clash of law and politics in U.S. governmental system. Author of books concerning the conflicting powers in the U.S. Attorney General’s Office (Jagiellonian University Press, 2004) and the political role of the U.S. Supreme Court (JUP, 2011), a commentary to U.S. Constitution (JUP, 2008), two volumes of Supreme Court case-law review (JUP, 2005 and JUP, 2009), as well as numerous articles in English and Polish concerning the position of the U.S. Supreme Court in the American legal and political system. He teaches at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Dr Piotr Szwedo is a lecturer at Faculty of Law at the Jagiellonian University (JU). In 2007 he received his PhD based on the dissertation entitled ‘Retaliations in the Law of the World Trade Organization’. He also graduated at the School of French Law (JU/University of Orleans) and the School of American Law (JU/Catholic University of America). He also studied at the University of Bordeaux and was a visiting fellow at the University of Orleans, Columbia Law School, University of Sorbonne, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, University of Kobe and Tsinghua University. In 2010 he received a grant of Canadian government on trade in water. In 2012 he was a visiting lecturer at the universities of Marburg and Nantes as well as a Winiarski Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge.

Born on 20th October 1975. After obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Law from the Faculty of Law, University in Osijek, in 2001, she enrolled in the master’s program: Administrative and Political Science at the Faculty of Law, University in Zagreb, which she successfully completed in 2006 and obtained the title of Master of Science (LL.M.). She obtained a doctoral degree at the Law Faculty in Osijek in 2010, after she had defended her doctoral thesis: Hohfeld’s Fundamental Legal Conceptions. Analysis, Criticism, Reception. She teaches a graduate class on the Theory of Law and State and Introduction to Law at the Faculty of Law in Osijek. She also teaches students of the Postgraduate Specialist Studies of Human Rights courses General Human Rights Protection and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She has published a number of scientific papers. The scope of her scientific interest involves theory of law and state, constitutional rights, and bioethics.

Born on 24th August 1975. After obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Law from the Faculty of Law, University J.J. Strossmayer in Osijek, in 2000, she enrolled in the master’s program: Business Law and Business Transactions at the Faculty of Law in Osijek, which she successfully completed in 2004. She obtained a doctoral degree at the Faculty of Law in Osijek in 2009, after she had defended her doctoral thesis: Terrorism, Anti-terrorism and Human Rights.

Piotr Łubiński obtained his Master’s degree from the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland) in 2004. He worked for the Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre as a researcher until 2006. In 2007 he practiced law – as a judge assistant – working on behalf of the Criminal Court in Krakow, International Affairs Section. In 2008, he joined the Polish Military Forces Contingent in Afghanistan as a Legal Adviser, serving two tours. Later on, he was granted a scholarship by the Law and Criminology Department, University of Wales in Aberystwyth. Additionally to his researcher obligation, he was working there as a part-time tutor. He successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Internationalized Tribunals” at the Jagiellonian University in 2012. Currently, he holds position of lecturer at the Department of Security Affairs and Civic Education at the Pedagogical University in Krakow. He is a member of Humanitarian Law Dissemination Commission at the Polish Red Cross. He was honoured several times with international and Polish awards in recognition of his service in Afghanistan and International Humanitarian Law dissemination achievements.

She holds Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences- International Relations from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia) and is a Graduate student at International Hellenic University (Thessaloniki, Greece) on the program of Black Sea Cultural Studies. At the same time she is a beneficiary of an Erasmus Mundus Master’s scholarship for 2011-2013 years. At different times she worked and has been active member of various Non-governmental organizations. From April till July 2012 she was an intern at Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) in the Secretary General’s office. She Speaks Georgian, English, Russian and French. Currently she is an intern at the International Centre for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS) as a research assistant. She is currently writing here master thesis about Human Rights record of Russia and lives in Athens, Greece. Her research interests includes: human rights, ethnic conflicts, Black Sea region and security.

Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, president, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Donald B. Holsinger is a development professional with extensive international experience in project preparation, management and evaluation. He has the unusual distinction of also being a well-published academic and research scholar. He has held professorships in development studies at leading American universities and was elected by his peers as president of the Comparative and International Education Society, the largest group of international development education professionals in the world. He retired from professional life following an appointment as Senior Education Specialist by the New Zealand Agency for International Development in the Wellington headquarters. Holsinger has experience developing and implementing grant mechanisms in conflict (Angola), post-conflict (Viet Nam), transition (Ukraine) and fragile states (Ethiopia). He served as advisor to the American Council on Education (office of Higher Education in Development) and authored for ACE a study comparing Brazilian and American higher education and training institutions for labour force development. He was invited in October 2008 as keynote speaker at the international conference on making development aid more sustainable held in Tokyo, Japan. Holsinger served as Senior TAACS education advisor to USAID/Egypt. Dr. Holsinger currently serves as the representative of the Kennedy Center for International Studies to the United Nations and resides in Geneva, Switzerland.

Heping Dang is a PhD candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights and a Doctoral fellow at the EU-China Human Rights Network. She holds a BA in Law (2007) and LLM in Criminal Law (2009) from the Beijing Normal University, China. Her PhD is entitled Public Opinion in International Law. Her research interests include international human rights law, criminal law, and Chinese law. She has participated in conferences and trainings in Austria, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Her publications cover the subjects of the death penalty and public opinion, criminal case studies, intangible cultural heritage, criminal settlement, etc.

Inken Heldt is a research assistant and PhD candidate at Research Group Civic Education, Department of Political Science, University of Hanover, Germany. She is involved with the development and coordination of international projects promoting social inclusion and active citizenship. Her research focus is on human rights education, civic engagement, inquiry- based learning strategies and global education. Employing a qualitative research approach, her thesis investigates how students in Germany understand the general notion of human rights and addresses ways to enhance instructional practice based on students’ conceptions.

Professor Shiow-Duan Hawang is the Director of the Department of Political Science at Soochow University, Director of Chang Fo-Chuan Center for Human Rights. Academic specialities: comparative politics, voting behavior, congressional politics, political culture, constitutional system.

Prof. Dr. Landa (Portugalete, 1968) obtained his Law Degree at Deusto University (Bilbao 1986-1991) and his PhD in the Faculty of Law of the University of the Basque Country (1998). After having held different academic posts (lecturer and senior lecturer in criminal law 1992-2001) he is Associate Professor in Criminal Law since 2001 at the Basque Country University (Euskadi, Spain). His principal lines of research deal with hate speech, hate crimes, international criminal law, terrorism, torture and enforcement of penalties (five books and more than thirty articles). He has been research or visiting fellow in Hamburg (2000, DAAD), Heidelberg (DAAD, 2004) and recently at the Lauterpatch Centre for International Law (University of Cambridge UK, 2010 2011, 2012). He was awarded with the Von Humboldt research fellow in November 2005. Prof. Landa has been Director of the Human Rights Office of the Basque Government from November 2005 until Mai 2009 where he was involved in the implementation of policies for politically motivated victims, peace education and human rights policies. At the moment he is director of a research team funded by the Spanish Government (I+D+I DER2012-33215) analyzing the system of criminal sanctions with a comparative approach.

Aycan Akcin is a sociologist and PhD candidate in Political Science and Government at the Aarhus University, Denmark. She worked at the Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation about a year as a referee in an EU-funded Project right after completing her MA at the Sussex University in Social and Political Thought in 2010. She is particularly interested in the sociology of human rights, women’s rights and conflict resolution. She is a member of International Studies Association, Centre for European Reform, and Human Rights Watch.

Margarita Jeliazkova educates social science teachers at the Master Program in Social Science Teaching at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. She also teaches deliberative research methodology at the University’s Master Program in Public Administration. Prior to that, she worked as a policy researcher, trainer and consultant in the area of education policy and strategic management, and policy evaluation, in diverse international settings, including Africa, Asia, the Russian Federation, and Eastern Europe. Jeliazkova’s academic background is in Philosophy (Sofia University, Bulgaria), Education (Philosophy for Children, Montclair State University, USA), and Political Science (Rutgers University, USA). M. Jeliazkova’s current academic interest is in citizenship education and teaching critical inquiry and deliberation methods.

Merle Haruoja has been a human rights lawyer and an NGO activist for more than 20 years. She is the founder of the Estonian Child Welfare Union (1988) and the Estonian Institute of Human Rights (1992). She is the author of numerous human rights articles and human rights teaching materials. In 2009, she published the Human Rights Teaching Material; the material is revised according to the international and national developments. She is the lecturer of human rights at Estonian Universities and schools. In the years 2008- -2010 M. Haruoja was the Fundamental Rights Agency FRALEX project’s senior legal expert, since 2011 as FCW COM 2011 Lot 1 Partner. M. Haruoja was the National Expert for many legal and human rights studies. She is a Board Member of the Estonian Institute of Human Rights, the Estonian Union of Lay Judges and a Member of the Advisory Committee of National Commission of UNESCO.

Associate Professor in Curriculum Studies at the North West University (Potchefstroom Campus). She obtained her PhD from the University of Stellenbosch in 2008. In 2006 she received a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship to study in Germany. Her research foci includes: curriculum studies and human rights for diverse education environments. Petro’s research involvement includes national and international projects funded by the National Research Foundation, the South African Netherlands Partnership on Alternatives in Development, and the Danish International Development Agency. She has delivered several papers and published widely on the topics of human rights in education for multicultural and multireligious environments.

Dr Rhona Smith is Professor of International Human Rights at Northumbria University in the UK. Human rights education is something delivered in practice as well as theory. Rhona has worked on human rights capacity building projects in higher education institutions in various countries, including serving as Visiting Professor in International Human Rights at Peking University Law School, Beijing, China for two years. Other higher education capacity building projects have taken her to a number of countries including Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Kenya, Turkey and Senegal. In addition, she has authored many papers and textbooks on human rights.

Graduate in Polish Philology at the University of Wroclaw and postgraduate studies in the field of Promotion and Advertisement at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Currently teaches the Polish language at the School Complex no. 1 in Ostrzeszów and teaches a course on the methodology of the Polish language teaching and ICT at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Kalisz. She is the editor-in-chief following magazines: Język Polski w Gimnazjum and Język Polski w Liceum in Kielce. She is the author of numerous publications on teaching methodology and the Partner. She specializes in teaching literature and media education.

Dr. Marcin Marcinko – Senior Teaching and Research Assistant (Chair of Public International Law, Jagiellonian University); coordinator of the International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Centre, Jagiellonian University; President of the National Commission for International Humanitarian Law of the International Humanitarian Law Dissemination Centre at the Polish Red Cross Main Board; member of the International Law Association – Polish Group; member of the International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP); winner of the Stanisław Kutrzeba Competition on the Protection of Human Rights in Europe, scholarship holder of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (2005-2006), scholarship holder of the Hague Academy of International Law (2006); author of numerous publications relating to the issues of fight against terrorism in international law, the use of force in international relations and issues concerning international humanitarian law of armed conflicts.

Is originally a Polish citizen but has spent the last 24 years studying and working in Asia. At present she is a PhD candidate in International Studies at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies in Tokyo with research focused on the areas of international human rights, social development and human trafficking. She holds a Master’s Degree from Waseda University in International Relations and a Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Environmental Biology from Nankai University in Tianjin, China. She has done extensive research on alternative care for child human trafficking survivors in Cambodia in the years 2007 and 2012, and currently is conducting a study on the regional cooperation to eradicate human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region with emphasis on the role of China and Thailand. She is fluent in her native Polish as well as in Chinese, Japanese, English, and Russian.

Jessica Ezekiel-Hart is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, Rivers State University of Education, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She is particularly interested in teacher education and gender issues.

A graduate of MA Peace and Conflict studies in 2011 of Makerere University (Uganda, Africa), currently a lecturer at the Department of Peace and Conflict studies and Department of Diplomacy and International Relations in Kampala University graduate school and A Research Fellow at the Directorate of Research, Kampala University and a Research Consultant at PIO International Ltd.

Spasimir Domaradzki holds PhD in Political Science from the Jagiellonian University in 2007. For nine years he was lecturing human rights, international relations and foreign policy at the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University. Since 2008-2012 appointed as vice dean at the Faculty of International Relations. He is also the co-founder and first chair of the Interfaculty Center for Human Rights at the University. Organizer of the Human Rights Summer School held in Krakow in 2010 and coordinator of the European Union Project ‘Internationalization of the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University’. Wilbur Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center, Michigan, United States and Center for Excellence, Sofia University, Bulgaria. OSCE short term elections observer. Author of a number of articles on human rights, American Foreign Policy and the role of international organizations. Since October 2012 university professor at the Lazarski University, Warsaw, Poland.