Students

Shreya studied B.A. LL.B.(Hons.) at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India and graduated at the top of her class in 2011. She came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and completed the BCL with distinction in 2012. She is currently pursuing DPhil in law under the supervision of Prof. Sandra Fredman. Her research seeks to understand how multiple identities of rights-bearers, especially women, affect their experience of human rights.

Shreya recently finished a stint at the UNDP, New York office working on the UN Partnership to Promote the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She has also assisted in the drafting of the IndianRights of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2011 at the Centre for Disability Studies, Hyderabad under the guidance of Prof. Amita Dhanda. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Nalsar Student Law Review and is the Editor for the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal. She is currently coaching the University of Oxford team for the 54^th Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

Avani is currently a Roy Goode Scholar pursuing MPhil in Law at University of Oxford under the supervision of Dr. Liz Fisher. Her thesis focusses on the need for a World Environment Organisation (WEO) in International Environmental Law as a norm-creating, norm-enforcing and dispute settling organisation. She argues that a ‘proponents vs. opponents approach’ against WEO is rather simplistic and requires an appreciation of the underlying themes of the  debate such as fragmentation and co-ordination; vertical-horizontal integration and the intermix of law and politics for a nuanced discussion.

She purused B.A. LLB (Honors) from Hidayatullah National Law University (Raipur, India) and BCL from University of Oxford (Oxford, UK). She is currently the President of Oxford Lawyers Without Borders and has been the Panel Leader of West Papua Panel for the last two years. Avani is working on the Free Speech Debate project with Prof. Timothy Garton Ash and is also the Associate Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth  Law Journal. She is Charities and Development Officer and a Peer Supporter at Linacre College. Avani is the National Youth Focal Point (India) for Eradicating Ecocide. She has received scholarship for an Academic Exchange Programme to Max Plank Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg, Germany) where she will be researching on “What can the Indian courts learn from the world?” in April 2013. 

Clara Feliciati

Clara Chapdelaine Feliciati is currently pursuing a DPhil on international girl child rights under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Herring. She holds bachelors of civil law and common law (B.C.L./LL.B. McGill University) and an LL.M. in Human Rights (King’s College London). She also studied International and European law at the University Paris II Panthéon-Assas. Clara is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor with the Law Society of Upper Canada and a member of the International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law.

Clara directed the Canadian Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Research Project at the International Bureau for Children’s Rights, which led to the Strategic Action Plan for the Protection of Victims of Child Trafficking (2007). She served as Child Rights Project Officer at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre within the Implementation of International Standards unit. She was Law Clerk at the Quebec Youth Tribunal and articled at the International Criminal Court within the Prosecution division of the Office of the Prosecutor. Clara worked directly with children during internships at the Paris Youth Tribunal and the Dans la Rue organization serving street youth in Montreal. She published articles on youth justice, the semiotics of law, international child rights, the girl child, and co-authored the UN Handbook on the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (2009).

Laura Hilly is currently undertaking a DPhil in Law. Her research project is supervised by Professor Nicola Lacey and Professor Sandra Fredman. It considers the contribution that gender diversity brings to appellate courts in common law jurisdictions.

She completed her BA/LLB at the Australian National University, graduating with first class honours; the University Medal in Law; and the Supreme Court Judges' Prize. She then worked at the Federal Court of Australia as an Associate to the Honourable Chief Justice Black AC; and as a litigation solicitor at Blake Dawson. Laura was admitted to practice in Australia in 2007. With the support of a Rhodes Scholarship she came to Oxford in 2009, completing the BCL with distinction in 2010, and her MPhil dissertation entitled A Woman's Contribution: Gender Diversity and the Judicial Process in 2011. Her DPhil research is supported by a Clarendon Scholarship.

Laura tutors in European Human Rights Law and Administrative Law. She has held the post of Waynflete Dean at Magdalen College, Oxford and is an Academic Assistant to Professor Mark Freedland at St John's College, Oxford.

She is the former Chair of Oxford Pro Bono Publico and a current Co-Editor of the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog.

Marija is reading for a D.Phil in Law at Wolfson college, Oxford. Her thesis is concerned with trafficking in human beings from the perspective of human rights law, and she is exploring the tension between rights, duties and interests of different actors involved in this practice. Before embarking on the D.Phil research, she completed an M.Phil in Law (distinction) at Wolfson college, Oxford (2012) and Magister Juris at Linacre college, Oxford (2011) supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholarship. Prior to coming to Oxford, she worked as a teaching assistant for Criminal Law at the University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Law and the University of Belgrade, Faculty for Prevention and Treatment of the Persons with Behavioural Problems. She also worked as a Legal Advisor at the Balkan Judicial Reform Programme (JRP), a Canadian CIDA cooperation initiative in support of the Judicial Sector advancement in Serbia and Bosnia.

Chris is a DPhil student, writing on the topic ‘What is Unfair Discrimination? A theory of the South African Constitutional Court’s unfair discrimination jurisprudence’. He is supervised by Dr Tarunabh Khaitan. Chris came to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship (South Africa-at-large, 2010) and has completed the BCL and MPhil, with distinctions in both degrees. He received his BA and LLB degrees from Rhodes University, South Africa, before clerking for Justice Jafta at the South African Constitutional Court. 

Chris is the Chairperson of Oxford Pro Bono Publico, co-administrator of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, and an editor of the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog.

Dhvani completed her Bachelors in Law from the University of Mumbai in 2009, after which she read for the BCL and the M.Phil degrees at the University of Oxford. She is currently a D.Phil candidate under the supervision of Dr Liz Fisher. Her M.Phil thesis ;examined the polarising academic scholarship on cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation in the US, and developed an intersecting framework of 'balancing' and 'absolutism' through which to better understand environmental law. It also studied the US Clean Water Act and related cases, and suggested that legislation, rather than academic scholarship, better captured this framework, ultimately arguing for a greater need to refocus attention on environmental statutes.Her doctoral thesis builds on this argument about the importance of legislation in the context of forest laws in India. Environmental law in India is messy and fragmented, but scholarship tends to focus only on the case law and the judicial activism of the Indian Supreme Court. Her thesis attempts a mapping exercise of the many statutes, rules and regulations that occupy the field. Through this exercise, she hopes to argue that legislation plays an important role in the development of new environmental legal concepts, and that we need to devote attention to the design of better statutory instruments.

Dhvani has been editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal and is currently convenor of the Environmental Law Discussion Group. She has also been actively involved with Oxford Pro Bono Publico since 2010, serving as Co-Chair and Chair of its executive committee, and supervising research projects on sexual harassment, the right to food, the death penalty and public participation in legislative processes. 

After graduating from St.Anne's College, Oxford in Jurisprudence Shona was called to the Bar of England and Wales and practised criminal and family law from 1 King's Bench Walk, London ( as Shona Mulholland). Her professional experience has led to her research interest in the points of intersection between family and criminal law. Shona is undertaking ESRC funded DPhil research on the impact of short term maternal imprisonment on children, supervised by Dr Rachel Condry and Professor Julian Roberts. The research explores the status of children of prisoners in English law and whether current sentencing policy protects children from 'all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status or activities.. of the child's parents' ( Article 2 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ). The research will engage directly with children and their carers to explore the nature of the impact of maternal imprisonment, and with the judiciary to examine sentencing practice. This research builds on previous research Shona undertook when obtaining an MSc (Distinction)  from the University of Surrey in Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Research. Her Masters research explored  the impact of motherhood as mitigation in criminal sentencing through qualitative interviews with members of the judiciary and an analysis of sentencing transcripts. 

Natasha is a DPhil student in the Faculty of Law. Her thesis concerns the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Natasha is admitted to practice as a lawyer in NSW, Australia, and she has worked as a consultant to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Pakistan and for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Sydney. She completed the BCL with Distinction at Magdalen College, Oxford and the MPhil in Law at St Peter's College, Oxford. She has an LLB and a Bachelor of Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Sydney.

Anup Surendranath is currently reading for the D.Phil in Law at Balliol College and researches the judicial discourse on affirmative action (reservations) in India. His under-graduate degree in law is from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), University of Law, Hyderabad (India) and he came to Oxford in September 2007. Prior to the D.Phil, Anup completed the BCL and the M.Phil in Law and was awarded a Distinction in both examinations. Starting September 2012, he will take up a teaching position at National Law University, Delhi and will teach Constitutional Law along with offering a seminar course on Comparative Constitutional Law.

Academic

Founder and convenor (with Inbar Levy), Empirical Legal Studies Discussion Group.

Research Associate, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

Postgraduate

MA (2009) Human Values and Contemporary Global Ethics, Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, Faculty of Law, King’s College, London

Undergraduate

LLB (1996) Faculty of Law, University of Birmingham

Smalley-Baker prize for Jurisprudence for best best result in the Final LLB Part II examination in Jurisprudence

Aitchison Memorial Prize for degree result, character, qualities of leadership, zeal and width of interest in all types of University activities

Tokai Foundation Scholarship

Scholarships and Awards

Hardwicke Scholarship

Sir Thomas More Bursary

Notable Cases

Prosecutor v Haradinaj et al, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (2012). Former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army acquitted of all charges following retrial.

Tariq v Home Office [2011] UKSC 35. Challenge to the use of 'closed material procedures' in discrimination cases. Currently before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Prosecutor v Seselj, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (2009). Member of court appointed amicus curiae team investigating allegations of contempt by legal representatives.

Behrami v France and Saramati v France, Germany, and Norway (2007) 45 EHRR SE10. Represented alleged victims of human rights abuses by peacekeeping forces.

I am a lecturer in law at the University of Reading School of Law;
Editor-in-Chief of the Refugee Law Initiative's Working Paper Series at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London; 
Researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute on questions of immigration, asylum and citizenship (part of the "Constitutional Principles and their Implementation" project);
A regular blog contributor to the Oxford Human Rights Hub and to 'Hatraklin' (Hebrew).
I have read the DPhil and MPhil at Lincoln College, and the BCL at Harris Manchester College.