Leadership

The Consortium is led by scholars who are dedicated to research, teaching, and engaging in direct action in the fields of human rights and humanitarian law. A small leadership team is supported by an extraordinary group of affiliated faculty who contribute their research, presentations, and who bring student groups to Consortium events. 

Dr. Cheyney Ryan

program co-chair

Cheyney Ryan is a senior fellow and director of human rights programs for the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford, and a member of Merton College. He has been a Global Ethics Fellow and Senior Fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, and Liberal Arts Fellow at Harvard Law School. For many years he taught at the University of Oregon as a professor of philosophy and professor of law, where he co-founded the Program in Conflict Resolution. He has also taught at Northwestern University and Boston University. He was named one of leading scholars "on the frontier of peace and conflict studies” by the Washington Post and has received numerous awards for human rights activism, including the Grassroots Award from the National Funding Exchange, the Annual Human Rights Award from the Oregon Human Rights Coalition, and the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the National Jewish Federation. 

Dr. Hugo Slim

program co-chair

Dr Hugo Slim is the Head of Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. Before joining ICRC in 2015, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) at the University of Oxford where he led research on humanitarian ethics and the protection of civilians. Hugo has combined a career between academia and practice. He was Chief Scholar at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue from 2003-2007 and Reader in International Humanitarianism at Oxford Brookes University from 1994-2003. Between 1983 and 1994, Hugo worked for Save the Children and the United Nations in Morocco, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Bangladesh. He received his PhD in humanitarian ethics from Oxford Brookes University in 2002. His most recent books are Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (2015 Hurst/OUP) and Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War (2007 Hurst/OUP).

Dr. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox

Executive Director 

Dr. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Quinnipiac University and Director of the Global Engagement Fellows Program.  She teaches courses in Comparative Constitutional Law, Constitutional Law, Public International Law and Human Rights Law, among other subjects, and serves as the faculty advisor for the mock trial team.  She has organized OCHR seminars on human rights, development and community action in conjunction with the United Nations in New York City.  She has presented papers, been featured in podcasts, and published articles on domestic violence law in India, First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States, legal pluralism in constitutional drafting, comparative constitutionalism, and critical race theory.  She is interested in understanding how different voices and currents came to shape constitutional discourse and conceptions of justice in both the Indian and United States Constitutions.

Katie Dwyer

Coordinator

Katie Dwyer is also the coordinator of the University of Oregon's Prison Education Program, which offers for-credit classes and other academic opportunities in three of Oregon's prisons. She has been involved in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program since 2007 and is now an instructor in the program, primarily teaching classes on conflict and narrative. She is also an instructor in the Communications Department at Chemeketa Community College and teaches both on campus and through their College Inside prison program. She is a passionate advocate for educational opportunities for underserved communities, and the transformative power of human rights-based education. She She holds two Master's degrees, one in Conflict Resolution, and the other in International Human Rights Law. 

Affiliated Faculty

A group of instructors regularly bring their students to OCHR events, and their participation and academic expertise enriches the experiences of all during the seminars. Other guests join us for single events, and their names can be found in the individual workshop profiles. 

Dr. Jim Astman

Jim Astman serves as Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, Department of Politics where he focuses on the role of dialogical pedagogy in human rights education.  He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCLA where he teaches moral, social-emotional, and cognitive development in children and adolescents.  He has recently retired as Head of School at Oakwood School, a K-12 school in North Hollywood, California.

Dr. Deen Chatterjee

Deen Chatterjee is Senior Advisor and Professorial Fellow in the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah and a Global Ethics Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He has also taught philosophy at the University of Utah, the University of Washington, the New School for Social Research, and the University of Pittsburgh. He has also held a David P. Gardner Faculty Fellowship at Harvard University.