Ankita Shanker
I earned my post-graduate degree in law from Oxford University and qualified as a barrister at the Bar of England and Wales. After nearly 1.5 years at international criminal courts/tribunals and 1.5 years teaching on a Swiss university LLM course, I am now working towards my doctorate in animal rights philosophy, theory, law, and policy, at the Universities of Basel and Antwerp. I hold various scholarships/fellowships, and am thus funded by the Finnish, Swiss, and Belgian governments/research institutions. In my spare time, I work, pro bono, as a legal correspondent moot coordinator to a UK animal law centre, a consultant composing law and policy recommendations for the European Union on behalf of the Dutch coalition for animal NGOs, and a legal and policy advisor to various animal NGOs across Europe. In the past, as Moot Court Training Expert for the International Commission of Jurists, I founded, developed, and ran the first moot on international human and animal rights law, held at the national level in Myanmar. I am now the Founder and Director of the first world moot on international law and animal rights, comprising an international mooting competition and mooting/coaching training courses.
Varnika Singh
Varnika Singh is a lawyer with 12 years of experience in various fields of law. She began her career prosecuting Trade Mark laws and has since completed a judicial clerkship with the Hon’ble Justice of the High Court of Delhi, India. She was also involved with the Human Rights Law Network and worked in the field of human rights. Varnika also has a Master of Laws in Science and Technology from the National Law Institute at the University of Bhopal. She is currently employed by FIAPO as the Head of Legal Affairs, (previously Legal Manager and Consultant) in the legal and policy team. Varnika’s work focuses on litigation, legal advice, animal issues deliberation, and the drafting and vetting of court petitions and legal instruments. Varnika worked on several significant cases while at FIAPO, including the prohibition of a bull sport known as Jallikattu, the issue of street dogs, and the prohibition of animals in circuses. Varnika has provided policy feedback on the draft amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1060, and the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972. She is particularly interested in the legal rights of wild animals and nature. She is also pursuing an LLM in Animal Law from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, to broaden her knowledge and scope in the field.
Wasseem Emam
Wasseem is an Egyptian-Canadian freelance consultant experienced in both policy and research and based out of Glasgow, Scotland. He has over 13 years of varied international experience across the fisheries and aquaculture sector and holds degrees in applied aquatic ecology. Wasseem’s doctoral studies on the welfare of farmed Nile tilapia have led him further into work on fish welfare. He has experience working on fisheries and aquaculture studies for a wide range of clients including the FAO, the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee (PECH), WorldFish, Cefas, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, ASC, the Marine Conservation Society UK and WWF-UK with extensive travel across Europe, North America, Africa and the Middle East.
Altamush Saeed
Altamush is a Pakistan-based animal rights lawyer currently pursuing an LLM in Animal Law at the Center for Animal Law Studies, Lewis and Clark Law School. He will be pursuing an Environmental Law, Natural Resources and Energy Law LLM at Lewis and Clark. He holds an LLM from the University of Michigan Law School, a BA-LLB from Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan and is a Co-Founder/Director of Charity Doings Foundation (charitydoings.org). Altamush is also an Animal Welfare Ambassador to Comprehensive Disaster Response Services (CDRSWorld.org), both incorporated in Pakistan/USA, and is a member of the American Bar Association Animal Law, International Animal Law, and the Climate Change & Human Rights Subcommittees, and of the newly formed Animal Law Working Commission Group for The Union of International Associations (UIA). He served as a Legislative Advocacy Intern at Best Friends Animal Society in 2022 and is currently serving as a Humane Policy Volunteer Leader at the Humane Society of the United States and a Government Relations Intern at The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for 2023.
Motunrayo Esan
Mo is a Nigerian law graduate of Babcock University with research interests in animal law, public international law, human rights, matrimonial causes and election petitions. While in her final year of her LLB at Babcock, Mo wrote an undergraduate dissertation titled “Raising a Legal Framework for the Regulation of the Adoption of Dogs for Security in Nigeria”. In her work, she drafted a bill and sought to employ legal principles that would make dog owners more responsible for their activities in the country. Upon completing her LLB, Mo immediately commenced with an LLM at Babcock and took international law courses. Her dissertation proposed a draft of a Universal Declaration on Animal Rights, and earned a distinction. In 2020, Mo was sponsored by the UK Centre for Animal Law to attend the Africa Animal Welfare Conference. She then commenced a role at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law as a research assistant towards the publication of an animal rights law textbook (forthcoming in 2023). She also currently works as an editorial assistant for the Carnelian Journal of Law and Politics where she reads manuscripts and refers proposed contributions for peer reviews. She has also completed the bar exam of the Nigerian Law School and has been sworn in as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Alice Bzovii
is a Romanian qualified attorney-at-law with more than ten years of legal experience in representing and assisting clients in commercial and civil law cases before Romanian national courts (various commercial contracts litigations, negotiations, property litigation etc.). In the last few years she has gained an academic background in international arbitration, investment treaty arbitration, international energy law through master of law programs, participation in several international arbitration and energy conferences, and webinars (ICC-YAF, PwC Romania, ICC, LCIA, ICDR, SIAC, Delos, AIPN, etc.). She holds a Master of Laws (LL.M) in International Arbitration from the University of Bucharest, Romania; a Master of Laws (LL.M) in Investment Treaty Arbitration from the University of Uppsala, Sweden; and a Master of Laws (LL.M) in Energy Law with Professional Skills from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, the UK.
Camellia Biswas
Camellia is doctoral researcher in the discipline of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India. She specialize in the sub-discipline of Environmental Anthropology and her doctoral research is about examining the ‘altered human-nature relationship in Indian Sundarbans under the larger discourse of climate disasters in the era of Anthropocene’. She has completed her masters from the School of human ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi. She also has a certificate course in Trade-Environment-Development from the London School of Economics. She worked as a Research Assistant at Ambedkar University in a Remote- sensing-based study of the built-up area dynamics as a measure of urban expansion, in Delhi and NCR. She also worked with the marginal population in India (Dalits and Tribal population) to understand their everyday climate change struggle, marginalised identity and resilience stories of climate disaster, ensuing their traditional knowledge of coping strategies of the past in present. Furthermore, how these coping strategies are politicised/neglected under different climate change policies across natural-anthropogenic disasters. She has more than 4 years of experiences in conducting fieldwork and have been trained in using GIS and remote sensing.
Victor Ojeah
Victor Ojeah is an LL.M Candidate at Harvard Law School, where his research focuses on the international legal interventions applicable to the looming sovereign debt crisis in Africa. Prior to Harvard, he practiced in a leading commercial law firm in Nigeria for three years. He is a former Scholar of the African Center of International Criminal Justice and founder of International Law Resource Africa – a platform that provides access to international law scholarship for African law students. At Harvard, he is Vice President of the International Arbitration Society, Editor of the International Law Journal and the Negotiation Law Review.
Nino Goshkheteliani
Nino Goshkheteliani, currently an Information Security Officer at Bank of Georgia is an advocate in Georgia with considerable work experience. She holds an LL.B and an LL.M in Private Law from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Prior to joining the team of Bank of Georgia, she worked as a lawyer at Deloitte & Touche where she primarily managed M&A transactions. She spent the early years of her career at Paine Stevens – a regional law firm advising on cross-border transactions subject to English law, and all aspects of commercial law in Georgia. In an academic setting, she co-founded Tbilisi State University Moot Court Society, the first of its kind in Georgia. Through her work there, she initiated and participated in the preparation of the only publicly accessible Georgian text of the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States.
Gayathri D. Naik
Gayathri D.Naik is a PhD Candidate and Commonwealth Scholar at the School of Law, SOAS University of London. She holds an BA/LLB from Government Law College, Ernakulum affiliated with Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala; M.A Public Administration from Indira Gandhi Open University, New Delhi, and an LLM in International Legal Studies from South Asian University, New Delhi. She received First Class Honours at the M G University for her BAL/LLB and the South Asian University Gold Medal for the LLM. She has qualified in the National Eligibility Test for Teaching in India, securing Junior Research Fellowship. She is a member of the Law, Environment, and Development Centre at SOAS, and a member of the IUCN WCEL Water and Wetlands Specialist Group, Early Career Specialist Group, and Compliance and Enforcement Specialist Group.