Biographies of Speakers (in order of family name)

Transcription

1 Biographies of Speakers (in order of family name) Rehan ABEYRATNE is Assistant Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was previously Associate Professor of Law at the Jindal Global Law School, where he taught from At Jindal, he also served as Assistant Dean (Research) and as Executive Director of the Centre for Public Interest Law. He has a B.A. in Political Science from Brown University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. His research and teaching interests include comparative constitutional law, human rights law, and public international law. His published works have appeared or are forthcoming in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (ICON), Asian Journal of Comparative Law, Nebraska Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Brooklyn Journal of International Law and George Washington International Law Review and in edited volumes published by Hart, Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Dian A. H. SHAH is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, National University of Singapore. She previously taught at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, where she remains a faculty appointee. Her research interests span the fields of constitutional history, comparative constitutional law and human rights, focusing on issues arising from the interaction between constitutional law, religion and politics in selected Asian jurisdictions. She is the author of "Constitutions, Religion and Politics in Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka" (CUP 2017) and the co-editor of "Law and Society in Malaysia: Pluralism, Ethnicity and Religion" (Routledge, forthcoming 2017). Dian currently serves as the Deputy Editor of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

2 ALFITRI obtained LL.B. (Shariâ) in 1999, M.A. (Islamic law) in 2004 from Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University (UIN Sunan Kalijaga) Yogyakarta, Indonesia; LL.M. in 2006 from the University of Melbourne, Australia sponsored by the Australian Development Scholarship/AusAID; Ph.D. in Law/Law, Societies & Justice in 2015 from University of Washington, Seattle sponsored by Fulbright. He is now a lecturer at Samarinda College of Islamic Studies (IAIN Samarinda). His teaching and research interests are Islamic law and its intersection with law and society, law and religion in Indonesia. His latest publication on the field is in Asian Journal of Comparative Law titled Whose Authority? Contesting and Negotiating the Idea of a Legitimate Interpretation of Islamic Law in Indonesia, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 10(2), Ameya BALSEKAR is Associate Professor of Government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. He earned his PhD in Government at Cornell University. His research has explored the politics of multiculturalism in India and the United States. His paper, entitled, Seeking Offense: Censorship as Strategy in Indian Party Politics was published in Comparative Politics in A larger project explores the historical evolution of the Indian constitutional order as it relates to the negotiation of privileges between the state, cultural and religious groups, and individual citizens. Shamsul FALAAH, an Advocate of the High Court of Maldives, is a doctoral candidate with the Faculty of Law, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Falaah has taught Human Rights Law and Public International Law at the Maldives National University and Islamic University of Maldives. He has also served in the Maldivian Government as the Legal Affairs Secretary at the President s Office, as a Commissioner of the Judicial Service Commission, Legal Adviser to the Defence Minister, and drafted several bills pertaining to human rights and defense sector. Gehan GUNATILLEKE is a human rights lawyer and researcher currently based in the United Kingdom, where he is pursuing a DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford. He is also a Research Director of Verité Research, a Colombo-based think tank, and an advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on international human rights treaty compliance. His recent publications include The Chronic and the Acute: Post-War Religious Violence in Sri Lanka (ICES/Equitas: 2015), and 'Confronting the Complexity of Loss: Perspectives on Truth, Memory and Justice in Sri Lanka' (Law & Society Trust: 2015). Gehan obtained an LL.B from the University of Colombo and an LL.M from Harvard Law School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Nyi Nyi KYAW is a postdoctoral fellow of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. He was born and raised in Myanmar where he did his undergraduate studies. He did his postgraduate studies doing two masters degrees in international political economy and human rights & democratisation (Asia Pacific) at Nanyang Technological University and Sydney University respectively. He then joined the University of New South Wales to do his PhD. He has published articles on Buddhist nationalism, citizenship and Muslims in Myanmar. At CALS, he will mainly work on how Buddhist nationalism has led to the passage of four race and religion laws in Myanmar, plus other projects on citizenship, constitutional politics, and human rights in Myanmar. His research interests are law and religion, law and social movements, citizenship, human rights, constitutional politics and nationalism. He is mainly interested in how religion, social movements, and nationalism have affected law and citizenship in Myanmar.

3 Eugénie MÉRIEAU is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Goettingen. She studied Law, Political Science, and Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the Universities of Sorbonne, Sciences Po, and the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. In 2017, she completed her PhD on "Thai Constitutionalism and Legal Transplants: a study of Kingship". From 2014 to 2017, she held research and teaching positions at Sciences Po in Paris and Thammasat University in Bangkok and was twice a visitor at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, National University of Singapore. She has lived for eight years in Asia where she held several positions including researcher for the King Prajadhipok's Institute under the Thai Parliament and consultant for the Asia-Pacific Office of the International Commission of Jurists. Matthew J NELSON is a Reader in Politics at SOAS (University of London). Before moving to SOAS he taught at UC Santa Cruz, Bates College, and Yale University. In he was the Wolfensohn Family Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; in 2011 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.; and in 2014 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Germany. Dr Nelson has served as an elected board member for the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), and the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Dr. Nelson s research focuses on the politics of South Asia with a special emphasis on nonelite politics, Islam, and democracy. He completed his PhD in Political Science at Columbia University. Jaclyn L. NEO is an Assistant Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She specializes in constitutional law, focusing on minorities and religion. She was a recipient of two graduate scholarships from NUS under which she completed her Masters of Law (LL.M.) and Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) at Yale Law School. Jaclyn has published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, Human Rights Quarterly, and the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. Her article on domestic incorporation of international human rights law in a dualist state won the Asian Yearbook of International Law s DILA International Law Prize. Jaclyn is an Executive Committee member of the NUS Centre for Asian Legal Studies and was also recently appointed to the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and the Asian Yearbook of International Law. Jaclyn was appointed as a consultant to WongPartnership in She is the sole editor of a recently published volume on Constitutional Interpretation in Singapore: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2017). Raphael Lorenzo Aguiling PANGALANGAN graduated from the University of the Philippines with degrees of Philosophy (cum laude, 2012) and Juris Doctor (2016). He serves as the Executive Assistant to the Office of the Ombudsman, as Assistant Coach of the Philippines Leiden-ICC team, and as an Assistant Editor for Eyes on the ICC, a scholarly journal dedicated to the study of International Criminal Justice. Currently, Raphael is a scholar of the Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the American University, Washington College of Law. He will be pursuing his Master s in International Human Rights Law with the University of Oxford. Shamshad PASARLAY is Assistant Professor at Herat University School of Law and Political Sciences in Afghanistan. He holds a bachelor s degree from Kabul University School of Islamic Law and an LL.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. His research interests involve comparative constitutional law and Afghanistan s constitutional history. His scholarship on judicial politics, religion and constitutionmaking and constitutional reform and constitutional interpretation in Afghanistan has appeared in numerous journals, including the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Washington International Law Journal and Michigan State Law Review. His current research focuses the role of Islam and the sharia in Afghanistan s Islamist draft constitutions of 1993.

4 PHAM Thi Thanh Huyen graduated with a B.A from Vietnam National University, Hanoi and gained her master s degree from Alzahra University in Iran in Her M.A thesis was on the role of America in the relationship of Iran and Vietnam from 1953 to Since graduating, she has been working as a lecturer in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University. She is now pursuing a PhD at the National University of Singapore, where her thesis focuses on the exchange between the Islamic World and Vietnam in history in general and Champa in particular. Ayesha WIJAYALATH graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in July 2017 with an LLM specializing in International and Comparative Law. Prior to her LLM, she was a Research Assistant at the Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS and conducted research on Sri Lanka s constitutional reforms.she is also an Attorney-at-Law from Sri Lanka and had appeared in Fundamental Rights Applications and Civil Appeals in the superior courts of Sri Lanka. She completed her apprenticeship at the Attorney General s Department, Sri Lanka and was involved with landmark cases relating to constitutional and administrative law. She also holds a BA in French from the University of Kelaniya and an MA in International Relations from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Biographies of Discussants (in order of family name) Radhika COOMARASWAMY was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Under-Secretary-General, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict in April She was reappointed by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in February In this capacity, she serves as a moral voice and independent advocate to build awareness and give prominence to the rights and protection of boys and girls affected by armed conflict. A lawyer by training and formerly the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, is an internationally known human rights advocate who has done outstanding work as Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women ( ). Ms. Coomaraswamy was appointed Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in May She was also a director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Sri Lanka, leading research projects in the field of ethnicity, women and human rights. She has served as a member of the Global Faculty of the New York University School of Law. She has published widely, including two books on constitutional law and numerous articles on ethnic studies and the status of women. Melissa CROUCH is a Senior Lecturer at the Law Faculty, the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research contributes to the field of Asian Legal Studies, with a concentration on Constitutional Change, Law and Development, and Law and Religion. Her research has a particular focus on Southeast Asia, where she has conducted extensive socio-legal field research. She leads the UNSW Law Southeast Asia engagement strategy. Melissa teaches in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, comparative law, law and development, and Asian legal systems. She is the Deputy Director of the Comparative Constitutional Law Project; member of the Australia- Myanmar Constitutional Democracy Project and the Gilbert+Tobin Centre for Public Law; and member of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

5 Arif A JAMAL is an Associate Professor of Law at NUS. He studied politics (BA) and law (LLB) in Canada and was called to the Bar of British Columbia. He then undertook postgraduate work in the UK earning an LLM degree, focusing on Islamic law, at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) and then obtaining his doctorate at the Faculty of Laws at University College London (UCL). Arif has been visiting professor at Tel Aviv University, The University of Trento (Italy) and The City University of Hong Kong. Arif's research and teaching interests include legal and political theory, law and religion and law in Muslim contexts. Andrew HARDING is a leading scholar in the fields of Asian legal studies and comparative constitutional law. He commenced his academic career at NUS before moving to SOAS, University of London, where he became Head of the Law School and Director of the Centre for South East Asian Studies. He joined NUS, as Director of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies and Director of the Asian Law Institute, from the University of Victoria, BC Canada, where he was Professor of Asia-Pacific Legal Relations and Director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. Professor Harding has worked extensively on constitutional law in Malaysia and Thailand, and has made extensive contributions to scholarship in comparative law, and law and development, having published nine books as author or editor. He is co-founding-editor of Hart Publishing's book series 'Constitutional Systems of the World', a major resource for constitutional law in context, and has authored the books on Malaysia and Thailand in that series (2011, 2012). Benjamin SCHONTHAL is Associate Professor of Buddhism and Asian Religions at the University of Otago, in New Zealand. His research examines the intersections of religion, law and politics in late-colonial and contemporary Southern Asia, with a particular focus on Buddhism and law in Sri Lanka. His work appears in The Journal of Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, the International Journal of Constitutional Law and other places. Ben's first book, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law, appeared with Cambridge University Press in His current project, supported by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand, examines the lived practices of monastic law in contemporary Sri Lanka and their links with state-legal structures. Asanga WELIKALA is Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh, and the Acting Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law. He is also a Research Associate of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Sri Lanka. Asanga's research interests lie in comparative constitutional law, applied constitutional theory, and Commonwealth constitutional history. He teaches and supervises across the public law field in Edinburgh, at Ordinary, Honours, masters, and doctoral levels. Asanga has been involved on both sides of transnational influence on constitutionmaking: as a member of the Office of Constitutional Support, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq; in various international advisory capacities in other countries on constitutional and legal reform issues; and as an active civil society voice and an independent expert in the current constitution-making process in Sri Lanka. Jointly Organised by: Co-Sponsored by: