Dr Nanor Kebranian is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Theory, History, and Human Rights. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford with fellowships from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Oxford's Clarendon Fund. She joins Queen Mary after serving as Assistant Professor in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, where she researched, published, and taught on Ottoman history, literary studies, and human rights. Her project for MELA considers the discursive effects of anti-denialist legislation in Turkey and Europe, focusing specifically on minority rights, cultural destruction, and post-conflict reconciliation.

Dr Grażyna Baranowska joins the project as a Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the Polish team. She defended her PhD thesis on “Enforced disappearances in Europe. Developing international standards of prevention and reaction” in the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in May 2016. In her work in the MELA project, she will concentrate on conflicts between memory laws and freedom of speech, integrating ECtHR jurisprudence and UN-level relevant norms and policies. She completed her studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Humboldt University Berlin and Kafkas University in Kars, Turkey. Previously she has been a researcher in the project Fostering Human Rights Among European (Internal and External) Policies, funded through the EU’s Seventh Framework Program and worked in the German Bundestag. Additionally she has organized a number of human rights courses and workshops.

Dr. León Castellanos-Jankiewicz is Researcher in International Human Rights Law at the T.M.C. Asser Institute, where he is a member of the MELA consortium (‘Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspectives’). His research focuses on the history of international law, comparative constitutional law and international legal theory. Previously, León was Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and Lecturer in the Law of International Organizations at Bocconi University, Milan. He has been Visiting Research Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge (2017), Vienna’s Institute for Human Sciences (2016) and Harvard Law School’s Graduate Program (2015-16). In 2017-2018, he received a postdoctoral grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation to conduct research on the entwined history of national civil codes, private international law and international human rights law. León holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (2017) and an MA in International Law from the Graduate Institute (2010).

Twitter: @leoncastjan

Dr. Paolo Caroli (Trento, 1986) is a practicing attorney and is teaching assistant of International Criminal Law in the universities of Trento and Bologna. In 2017 he defended his PhD (cum laude) at the University of Trento about the Italian experience of transitional justice after World War II. In 2012 he worked as intern in the International Crimes and Accountability team of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin and he still collaborates with the center as ECCHR alumnus. He also works as journalist.

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Ms Marina Bán is a PhD Researcher for the MELA team based in the Netherlands. She is working on her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Dr Uladzislau Belavusau and Professor Dr Janne Nijman at the T.M.C. Asser Institute in the Hague, on secondment from the University of Amsterdam. She holds a BA in History from Eotvos Lorand University and an MA in Human Rights from Central European University (both in Budapest, Hungary). In her thesis, she compares the legal governance of memory in France and Hungary, and studies its compatibility with European and international law. She has previously worked for different human rights NGOs in Budapest (Hatter Society for LGBT People and Amnesty International Hungary), mostly dealing with preparing and translating research materials, fundraising and human rights education. Her other research interests include European history (especially of Hungary during and after the communist era), LGBT rights and freedom of expression.

Twitter: @marinaban91

Anna Wójcik is a MELA Researcher on the PhD track at the Institute of Law Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences. She holds Master of Arts degrees in Law from the University of Warsaw and in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest. Moreover, Anna obtained BAs in philosophy and cultural anthropology from the University of Warsaw in a framework of Individual Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and completed a semester abroad at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sorbonne Paris-IV. A native Polish speaker, she is fluent in English and French and conversational in Russian. Her up-to-date research interests include, but are not limited to, freedom of expression and comparative hate speech policies, as well as political theory, and law and society. In her PhD project, Anna will focus on developments of memory laws in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of transitional justice and memory politics.

Twitter: @annawojcik

Cris van Eijk is a project assistant for the Dutch team and an intern at the T.M.C. Asser Institute. He holds an LLM in Public International Law from Leiden University, where he wrote his thesis comparing trends in the treaty applicability processes of the judiciaries of the United States and European Union. He previously graduated from Leiden University College The Hague in 2017 with a BA cum laude in Liberal Arts and Sciences, majoring in International Justice. Previously, Cris interned for the Civil Society Initiatives program at the International Commission on Missing Persons, where, among other projects, he researched commemoration practices for missing persons and worked on a comparative analysis of the rights of families of missing persons. He is interested in anti-discrimination law, human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, outer space law, and comparative foreign relations law. He is a native English speaker, conversational in Dutch, and literate in Spanish. He will be pursuing an accelerated BA in Law at Cambridge University in October 2019.

Twitter: @crisveijk