John Tasioulas joined the University of College London in January 2011 as the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence. He was previously a Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Glasgow and has held visiting research posts at Melbourne and the Australian National University. His research grants include two Research Leave Awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2001 and 2004) and a British Academy Research Development Award (2008-2010) for a monograph-length project on the philosophy of human rights. He is currently a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and serves on the editorial boards of the American Society of International Law Studies in International Legal Theory and the Journal of Applied Philosophy. He is the author of numerous published articles on the legal and moral philosophy of international law and is co-editor of The Philosophy of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Professor Tasioulas' research interests revolve around Socrates' question, 'How should one live?', and the attempt to draw out the moral, political and legal implications of an acceptable answer to it. One strand of this inquiry focuses on the philosophy of human rights. Professor Tasioulas is currently engaged in writing a monograph that develops a pluralistic, interest-based account of human rights, one that - among other things - seeks to provide us with the intellectual resources to respond to the familiar objection that human rights reflect merely Western values.

Professor Tasioulas also has on-going research interests in a number of other topics, including the nature of moral wrong-doing and the responses appropriate to it, the components of human well-being, the plurality of ethical values, as well as meta-ethical questions about the reality of moral values and the possibility of moral knowledge.

Madeleine Rees qualified as a lawyer in 1990 and became a partner in a large law firm in the UK in 1994 specializing in discrimination law, particularly in the area of employment, and public and administrative law and she did work on behalf of both the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission mainly on developing strategies to establish rights under domestic law through the identification of test cases to be brought before the courts. Madeleine brought cases both to the European Court of Human Rights and The European Court in Luxembourg. She was cited as one of the leading lawyers in the field of discrimination in the Chambers directory of British lawyers. In 1998 she began working for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as the gender expert and Head of Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In that capacity she worked extensively on the rule of law, gender and post conflict, transitional justice and the protection of social and economic rights.

The Office in Bosnia was the first to take a case of rendition to Guantanamo before a court. The OHCHR office dealt extensively with the issue of trafficking and Madeleine was a member of the expert coordination group of the trafficking task force of the Stability Pact, thence the Alliance against Trafficking. From September 2006 to April 2010 she was the head of the Women`s rights and gender unit. For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, focusing on using law to describe the different experiences of men and women, particularly post conflict. The aim was to better understand and interpret the concept of Security using human rights law as complementary to humanitarian law and how to make the human rights machinery more responsive and therefore more effective from a gender perspective.

Karen Alter's current research investigates how the proliferation of international legal mechanisms is changing international relations.  Her book in progress, The New Terrain of International Law: International Courts in International Politics provides a new framework for comparing and understanding the influence of the twenty-four existing international courts, and for thinking about how different domains of domestic and international politics are transformed through the creation of international courts.     

Alter is author of: The European Court's Political Power (Oxford University Press, 2009), andEstablishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe. (Oxford University Press, 2001) and more than forty articles and book  chapters on the politics of international law and courts.  Recent publications investigate the politics of international regime complexity,  how delegation of authority to international courts reshapes domestic and international relations, and politics in the Andean Community's legal system.

Professor Alter teaches courses on international law, international organizations, ethics in international affairs, and the international politics of human rights at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Alter has been a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Howard Foundation research fellow and an Emile Noel scholar at Harvard Law School. Her research has also been supported by the DAAD and France's Chateaubriand fellowship. She has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation where she is an associate scholar of the Center on Law and Globalization, Northwestern University's School of Law, Harvard University's Center for European Studies, Institute d'Etudes Politiques, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartiges Politik, Universität Bremen, and Seikei University. Fluent in Italian, French and German, Alter serves on the editorial board of European Union Politics and Law and Social Inquiry and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kavita Ramdas is an inspirational and mindful leader, an advocate for human rights, open and civil societies, and a respected advisor and commentator on issues of social entrepreneurship, development, education, health, and philanthropy.  Kavita has spent her professional life shaping a world where gender equality can help ensure human rights and dignity for all.  She is currently a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Stanford University, The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS).  In 2011, Kavita will be a Visiting Scholar abd Practitioner at Princeton University's Wodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

From 1996 to 2010, Kavita served as President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, which grew to become the world's largest public foundation for women's rights under her leadership.  During her tenure, the Global Fund assets grew to $21million from $3 million, giving women in more than 170 countries critical access to financial capital that fueled innovation and change. Kavita serves as Senior Advisor for the Global Fund for Women.

An instinctive entrepreneur, Kavita's leadership skills were recognized early in her tenure at the Global Fund for Women when she was chosen to be a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.  Her vision, drive, and management skills helped the Global Fund launch programs to promote girls' education, defend women's right to health and reproductive rights, prevent violence against women, and advance women's economic independence and political participation. Among these were a pioneering Africa Outreach Initiative that channeled over $30 million in grants to women's rights activists in Sub Saharan Africa, and the ground-breaking Now or Never Fund which infused $10 million over 5 years to groups working to preserve women's reproductive health and rights, combat religious extremism, and sustain communities in the midst of war and conflict.

Prior to her time at the Global Fund for Women, Kavita developed and implemented grantmaking programs to combat poverty and inequality in inner cities across the United States as well as advance women's reproductive health in Nigeria, India, Mexico and Brazil in her capacity as a Program Officer at the Chicago based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Kavita's extensive experience in the fields of global development, human rights, women's leadership, and philanthropy have led to her service as an Advisor and Board Member for a wide range of organizations; the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Women's Funding Network,  and the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Asian University for Women Support Foundation, the Global Health Initiative of the University of Chicago, PAX World Management, and the Council of Advisors on Gender Equity of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.

Kavita Chairs the Expert Working Group of the Council of Global Leaders for Reproductive Health, an initiative led by Mary Robinson, former President for Ireland.  She serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, Mount Holyoke College, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. 

An accomplished writer and public speaker, Kavita's thought leadership is evident in writings published in a wide variety of journals, newspaper, and magazines, including the Nation, Foreign Policy, and Conscience. She has spoken at many venues, including the Global Philanthropy Forum, TED, and the United Nations.  Her media commentary and interviews include appearances on NOW with the Bill Moyers Show, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Democracy Now!, and CNN.

Kavita is the recipient of numerous philanthropic and leadership awards including in 2010, the Council on Foundation's Robert Scrivner Award for Most Creative Grantmaker of the Year, and the Frances Hesselbein Award for Excellence in Leadership. She is a 2011 Awardee of the Legal Momentum Award.

Kavita was born and raised in India and is married to Zulfiqar Ahmad, an independent researcher on South Asia security issues. Their daughter, Mira Ahmad, is a junior at Palo Alto High School.  Kavita enjoys hiking, cooking, writing, poetry, and is a long time practitioner of yoga. 

Information and communication technology platforms have transformed many aspects of modern life for many individuals around the world. They have revolutionized the realms of commerce, sociability, and even production. The realm of politics and governance, however, is more resistant to ICT revolutions. In this paper, we argue that there are fundamental dis-analogies between politics and these other realms that make the pace of innovation, and to the incidence of transformative ICT platforms, much lower. Instead of looking for "the next big thing," those who wish to understand the positive contribution of ICT to political problems such as public accountability and public deliberation should focus on incremental rather than revolutionary dynamics. We examine these incremental dynamics at work in six important ICT-enabled political accountability efforts from low and middle-income countries (Kenya, Brazil, Chile, India, Slovakia).

Archon Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research examines the impacts of civic participation, public deliberation, and transparency upon governance. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). Current projects examine democratic reform initiatives in regulation, public accountability, urban planning, and public services. He has authored five books, three edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in journals including American Political Science Review, Public Administration Review, Political Theory, Journal of Political Philosophy, Politics and Society, Governance, Journal of Policy and Management, Environmental Management, American Behavioral Scientist, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Boston Review.

Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at University of Sydney, and is the Law Faculty's Associate-Dean (International). He is also an Academic Panel member of Doughty Street Chambers in London, the UK's leading human rights practice. He has previously held positions at Cambridge University, The Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, Washington College of Law, American University, and was the founding Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University (2000-2005). He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2004, based in Washington DC, and Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in 2008. He is author and editor of eight books and more than 80 articles, book chapters, reports and papers.

He has worked for 15 years as a consultant and adviser on international and domestic human rights law in Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Thailand, Iraq, Nepal, Laos, China, and Myanmar/Burma, and for such organizations as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, AusAID, and the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, and a number of transnational corporations, and NGOs.  He has also previously worked for three years with the Australian Law Reform Commission and two years with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

His latest publications include the critically acclaimed Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy (CUP, 2009), Corporations and Human Rights (Ashgate 2009), and The World Trade Organisation and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2009) Another edited collection entitled Principled Engagement: Promoting Human Rights in Pariah States will be published by UNU Publications in 2011.  He is currently working on another book investigating the interrelations between human rights and global finance.

David was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and brought up there during the 1960s and 70s.  He studied in England in the 1980s at Sheffield Hallam University and the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge, and after obtaining his doctorate from the latter in 1990 he moved to Australia.  He now lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

Patricia Isasa, a successful architect in Argentina, is a survivor of torture and imprisonment from the age of 16 to 18 during the Argentine dictatorship. She was imprisoned in 1976.  Twenty years later she almost single handedly investigated the identities of 8 perpetrators of the crimes against her and others.  Because of an impunity law in Argentina at the time, she took her case to Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain who requested extradition, which was denied. In 2009 her case was finally tried in Argentina.

Six perpetrators were found guilty of human rights violations.  Her trial is one of the first trials of the Argentine military and police. Patricia is now helping others with their cases and is working with President Cristina Kirchner to investigate the takeover of Papel Prensa in the 70s by the then and present media giant Clarin, which has resulted in extensive corporate control of the media in Argentina.

Sponsored by

Program on Human Rights, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,

Center for Latin American Studies,

and Arroyo House